“Who said” versus “what was said”: Selective trust in teachers and books

When faced with different epistemic authorities, identifying information quality is important for children's knowledge acquisition. The current study explored how explanation quality influences children's trust in two types of epistemic authorities: a person and a book. Chinese children ages 5, 7, and 9 (n = 133; 73 girls) were presented with scientific explanations that varied in source (teacher/book) and explanation quality (circular/noncircular) and indicated their preferences or endorsements. The results indicated that 5-year-olds initially preferred the teacher over the book, whereas 7- and 9-year-olds did not show a preference between the two sources. After each source provided circular or noncircular explanations, 7- and 9-year-olds preferred to trust the source that offered noncircular explanations, but 5-year-olds did not differentiate between the sources based on explanation quality. These findings suggest that 5-year-old children's trust in epistemic authorities focuses on source category, but children age 7 and above rely on explanation quality.