Living in a digital ecology: Children's selective trust in technological informants

IF 2.1 2区心理学 Q2 PSYCHOLOGY, DEVELOPMENTAL

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology Pub Date : 2025-09-15 DOI:10.1016/j.appdev.2025.101872

Zuofei Geng , Bei Zeng , Jin Huang

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Children learn not only from observation and interaction with their environment but also from the testimony of others. In the digital age, interactive technologies increasingly serve as information sources alongside peers, caregivers, and teachers. This study investigated whether children selectively learn from technological informants in a novel-word learning context. 180 Chinese preschoolers (M = 49.17 months, SD = 7.04 months, 51.7 % girls) were randomly assigned to one of six conditions: accurate voice assistant, inaccurate voice assistant, accurate robot, inaccurate robot, accurate human, or inaccurate human. Children first engaged in an agency beliefs interview regarding their corresponding informants followed by a classic selective trust task. We found that children selectively trusted (and distrusted) voice assistants and robots based on their past accuracy, while they demonstrated a general trust in humans, even when the humans were previously inaccurate. Agency beliefs explained variations in children's trust of voice assistants and humans. We also observed developmental differences in children's levels of trust and distrust toward both accurate and inaccurate informants. These findings suggest that 3–4-year-olds engage in both epistemic and social considerations in selective trust, and their judgments are susceptible to the agentic features of informants.

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生活在数字生态中：儿童对技术线人的选择性信任

孩子们不仅从观察和与环境的互动中学习，而且从他人的见证中学习。在数字时代，互动技术越来越多地与同伴、照顾者和教师一起成为信息来源。本研究调查了儿童是否有选择性地在新单词学习环境中向技术信息提供者学习。180名中国学龄前儿童（M = 49.17个月，SD = 7.04个月，51.7%为女孩）被随机分配到准确语音助手、不准确语音助手、准确机器人、不准确机器人、准确人或不准确人6个条件之一。儿童首先对他们相应的线人进行代理信念访谈，然后进行经典的选择性信任任务。我们发现，孩子们会根据语音助手和机器人过去的准确性有选择地信任（或不信任）它们，而他们对人类表现出普遍的信任，即使人类以前是不准确的。代理信念解释了儿童对语音助手和人类信任的差异。我们还观察到儿童对准确和不准确举报人的信任和不信任程度的发展差异。研究结果表明，3 - 4岁儿童在选择性信任中既考虑认知因素，又考虑社会因素，其判断容易受到举报人代理特征的影响。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology PSYCHOLOGY, DEVELOPMENTAL-

CiteScore

5.10

自引率

3.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology focuses on two key concepts: human development, which refers to the psychological transformations and modifications that occur during the life cycle and influence an individual behavior within the social milieu; and application of knowledge, which is derived from investigating variables in the developmental process. Its contributions cover research that deals with traditional life span markets (age, social roles, biological status, environmental variables) and broadens the scopes of study to include variables that promote understanding of psychological processes and their onset and development within the life span. Most importantly.