Abstract In a society inundated with information, fostering empirical habits of mind in young children is critically important. Perhaps the most fundamental epistemic principle is that claims, no matter who is making them, must be supported by sufficient evidence. Building on past research on young children’s selective social learning, three experiments with 3- to 7-year-old children (N = 136) investigated when children come to understand this central principle. The results suggest clear age differences: By age 4, children consistently selected an individual who verified their claims over one who did not and by age 6, children were able to do so even if that act of verification conflicted with that individual’s past history of reliability. Further, with age, children’s ability to explicitly justify those choices in terms of informants’ epistemic practices improved dramatically. Overall, this work presents an important next step in investigating children’s developing understanding of the process by which evidence supports epistemic claims.

中文翻译：

---

孩子们逐渐认识到即使是可靠的来源也需要验证他们的说法

摘要 在信息泛滥的社会中，培养幼儿的经验思维习惯至关重要。或许最基本的认知原则是，无论是谁提出的主张，都必须有足够的证据支持。在过去对幼儿选择性社会学习的研究的基础上，对 3 至 7 岁儿童（N = 136）进行的三个实验调查了儿童何时理解这一核心原则。结果表明明显的年龄差异：到 4 岁时，孩子们始终选择一个验证自己声明的人，而不是一个没有验证的人，到 6 岁时，即使该验证行为与该个人过去的可靠性历史相冲突，孩子们也能够这样做. 此外，随着年龄的增长，儿童根据线人的认知实践明确证明这些选择的能力得到了显着提高。总的来说，这项工作为调查儿童对证据支持认识论断言的过程的理解发展提供了重要的下一步。