On a need-to-know basis: Young children distinguish conventional and privileged information

Abstract

Young children are biased to treat new information communicated to them as conventional, shareable, and known by others in their community. However, some information is privileged in the sense that is not intended to be shared with or known by all. The current study compared judgements regarding sharing conventional versus privileged information. Seventy-four 3- to 5-year-olds and adults responded to vignettes in which a protagonist had to decide whether to share conventional (an object name) or privileged information (surprise). Consistent with our hypothesis, there was no developmental change in sharing judgements for conventional information but a clear decrease with age for sharing privileged information. Nonetheless, even 3-year-olds were more likely to judge that conventional information should be shared more than privileged information, though this difference increased with age. While children overall treat information as shareable, there is an emerging ability to distinguish how conventional versus privileged information should be shared.