<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
<html><head><style type="text/css"><!--
blockquote, dl, ul, ol, li { padding-top: 0 ; padding-bottom: 0 }
--></style><title>Re: responses to mislabelling</title></head><body>
<div><font face="Times">Dear Jim,</font></div>
<div><font face="Times"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Times">There is a really lovely paper by Melissa
Koenig, Fabrice Clément, and Paul Harris on this in<font
color="#0033FF"><u> a recent Psych Science</u></font><font
color="#000000"> (Vol 15(10), Oct 2004. pp. 694-698). Abstract
follows. I hope this helps.</font></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000">Best,</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000">Deb</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><b><br></b></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><b>Abstract:</b> The extent to
which young children monitor and use the truth of assertions to gauge
the reliability of subsequent testimony was examined. Three- and
4-year-old children were presented with two informants, an accurate
labeler and an inaccurate labeler. They were then invited to learn
names for novel objects from these informants. The children correctly
monitored and identified the informants on the basis of the truth of
their prior labeling. Furthermore, children who explicitly identified
the unreliable or reliable informant across two tasks went on to
demonstrate selective trust in the novel information provided by the
previously reliable informant. Children who did not consistently
identify the unreliable or reliable informant proved
indiscriminate.</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>At 3:46 PM +0000 2/22/05, James Russell wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Dear Colleagues,<br>
<br>
I vaguely recall there being research into young children's reactions
when adults deliberately mislabel objects -- such as calling a cat a
canary. Can anyone enlighten me?<br>
<br>
Jim Russell<br>
Cambridge, UK</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<x-sigsep><pre>--
</pre></x-sigsep>
<div>Deborah Kelemen, Ph.D.<br>
Assistant Professor<br>
Boston University<br>
Department of Psychology<br>
64 Cummington Street<br>
Boston MA 02215<br>
<br>
Email: dkelemen@bu.edu<br>
Office Phone: (617) 353-2758<br>
Child Cognition Lab Phone: (617) 358-1738<br>
Fax: (617) 353-6933<br>
URL: http://www.bu.edu/childcognition</div>
</body>
</html>