Young children learn selectively from reliable over unreliable sources. However, the cognitive underpinnings of their selectivity (attentional biases or trait ascriptions) and its early ontogeny are unclear. Thus, across three studies (N = 139, monolingual German speakers, 67 female), selective-trust tasks were adapted to test both preschoolers (5-year-olds) and toddlers (24-month-olds), using eye-tracking and interactive measures. These data show that preschoolers' selectivity is not based on attentional biases, but on person-specific trait ascriptions. In contrast, toddlers showed no selective trust, even in the eye-tracking tasks. They succeeded, however, in eye-tracking tasks with the same word-learning demands, if no ascriptions of reliability were required. Thus, these findings suggest that preschoolers, but not toddlers, use trait-like ascriptions of reliability to guide their selective learning.

中文翻译：

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儿童选择性信任的认知基础和早期发展

幼儿有选择地从可靠的来源学习而不是不可靠的来源。然而，其选择性（注意偏差或特质归因）的认知基础及其早期个体发育尚不清楚。因此，在三项研究中（N  = 139，只讲德语，67 名女性），选择性信任任务被调整来测试学龄前儿童（5 岁）和幼儿（24 个月大），使用眼动追踪和互动措施。这些数据表明，学龄前儿童的选择性不是基于注意力偏差，而是基于个人特定的特质归因。相比之下，即使在眼球追踪任务中，幼儿也没有表现出选择性信任。然而，如果不需要可靠性归因，他们在具有相同单词学习要求的眼动追踪任务中取得了成功。因此，这些发现表明，学龄前儿童，而不是幼儿，使用类似特质的可靠性归因来指导他们的选择性学习。