CSC - Melissa Koenig / Children’s Testimonial Learning
CSC - Melissa Koenig / Children’s Testimonial Learning
September 19, Melissa Koenig from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota joins the Cognitive Science Colloquium to share her work on the factors that constrain and support children's learning from others. Her talk, abstracted below, is "Children’s Testimonial Learning: Early Judgments of Epistemic and Moral Agency."
Children’s testimonial learning involves a sophisticated conception of human agency. Developmental research on children’s testimonial learning opened a window onto a form of reasoning aimed at identifying the intentions of epistemic and moral agents. Children’s testimonial reasoning takes both a critical interest in the reliability of sources, as well as a cooperative view of another person and her acts of communication. In this talk, I will focus on the role that social groups play in children’s epistemic judgements and discuss ongoing work in our lab that capitalizes on the trust children place in parents, friends and teachers.