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Most research on children's conception of death has probed their understanding of its biological aspects: its inevitability, irreversibility and terminal impact. Yet many adults subscribe to a religious conception implying that death marks the beginning of a new life. Two recent empirical studies confirm that in the course of development, children supplement their biological conception of death with this religious conception. Depending on which of those two conceptions is primed, children as well as adults arrive at mutually inconsistent conclusions about whether death arrests various bodily and mental processes. The coexistence of these two conceptions within the same individual raises questions about the extent to which children and adults recognize that inconsistency and how they respond when it is brought to their attention.

Résumé Une longue tradition de recherches dans le domaine de la psychologie du développement a montré que lorsque les jeunes enfants cherchaient à être réconfortés par un adulte, ils choisissaient en priorité une personne qui leur était familière et à laquelle ils étaient attachés. Mais que se passe-t-il lorsque les enfants recherchent des informations plutôt qu'un réconfort ? Se tournent-ils également vers des personnes qui leur sont proches, plutôt que vers des inconnus ? Nous avons imaginé une série d'expériences qui nous ont permis de constater que les liens affectifs qui existaient entre les jeunes enfants et les adultes les guidaient aussi dans leur recherche de l'information. Mais d'autres facteurs influencent les enfants dans cette quête et ont un impact sur le fait qu'ils acceptent ou non les informations qu'on leur propose. Ainsi nous avons constaté que les enfants avaient tendance à évaluer la fiabilité passée de leurs informateurs potentiels et à adopter le point de vue de ceux qui s'avéraient particulièrement dignes de confiance. Les enfants jugent en outre leurs informateurs selon leur statut social et préfèrent faire confiance à ceux dont l'opinion relève d'un consensus, plutôt qu'à ceux dont les affirmations s'opposent aux opinions du plus grand nombre. Enfin, dans l'apprentissage culturel qui est le leur, les jeunes enfants, à mesure qu'ils grandissent, font de plus en plus confiance à des personnes qui ne leur sont pas familières. Ils souscrivent avant tout aux opinions des informateurs qui leur semblent dignes de confiance, en particulier lorsque ceux-ci sont représentatifs de la communauté à laquelle ils appartiennent.

Abstract Children rely extensively on others' testimony to learn about the world. However, they are not uniformly credulous toward other people. From an early age, children's reliance on testimony is tempered by selective trust in particular informants. Three‐ and 4‐year‐olds monitor the accuracy or knowledge of informants, including those that are familiar. They prefer to seek and endorse information provided by someone who has proved accurate in the past rather than someone who has made mistakes or acknowledged ignorance. Future research is likely to pinpoint other heuristics that children use to filter incoming testimony and may reveal more generalized patterns of trust and mistrust among individual children.

Abstract In two experiments, children aged 3, 4 and 5 years (N= 61) were given conflicting information about the names and functions of novel objects by two informants, one a familiar teacher, the other an unfamiliar teacher. On pre‐test trials, all three age groups invested more trust in the familiar teacher. They preferred to ask for information and to endorse the information that she supplied. In a subsequent phase, children watched as the two teachers differed in the accuracy with which they named a set of familiar objects. Half the children saw the familiar teacher name the objects accurately and the unfamiliar teacher name them inaccurately. The remaining half saw the reverse arrangement. In post‐test trials, the selective trust initially displayed by 3‐year‐olds was minimally affected by this intervening experience of differential accuracy. By contrast, the selective trust of 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds was affected. If the familiar teacher had been the more accurate, selective trust in her was intensified. If, on the other hand, the familiar teacher had been the less accurate, it was undermined, particularly among 5‐year‐olds. Thus, by 4 years of age, children trust familiar informants but moderate that trust depending on the informants' recent history of accuracy or inaccuracy.

Abstract To determine whether children retain a preference for a previously accurate informant only in the short term or for long‐term use, 3‐ and 4‐year‐old children were tested in two experiments. In both experiments, children were given accuracy information about two informants and were subsequently tested for their selective trust in the two informants (Experiment 1: immediately, 1 day and 1 week later; Experiment 2: immediately, 4 days and 1 week later). Both age groups preferred to trust the accurate informant not only immediately after receiving accuracy information but also at subsequent time‐points. Children who were immediately able to explicitly identify the accurate informant were significantly more likely to seek and accept information from her 1 week later. However, even when they had not been asked to explicitly identify the accurate informant both age groups still maintained their preference for her. Thus, by 3 years of age, children spontaneously choose a previously accurate informant up to 1 week after exposure to information regarding her accuracy.

Abstract Recent findings show that preschool children are selective with respect to whom they ask for information and whose claims they endorse. In particular, they monitor an informant's record of past accuracy or inaccuracy and use that record to gauge future trustworthiness. We ask if preschoolers also monitor the non‐verbal cues of assent or dissent that bystanders display toward an informant's claims and use that information to gauge an informant's trustworthiness. In familiarization trials, 4‐year‐olds watched as two adult informants made conflicting claims regarding the name of an unfamiliar object. Two adult bystanders consistently signaled assent – via nods and smiles – to the claims of one informant, and dissent – via head shakes and frowns – from the claims of the other informant. When invited to endorse one of the two claims, 4‐year‐olds mostly agreed with the informant who had received bystander assent. Thus, in the absence of background knowledge about an object's name, children use third‐party non‐verbal signals to assess the accuracy of conflicting labels. On subsequent test trials, the informants again made conflicting claims about novel object names, but in the absence of the two bystanders. Despite the lack of any informative bystander signals, children with more advanced understanding of mental states continued to display greater trust in the informant who had received bystander assent in the earlier trials.

AbstractExperimental studies of children's responses to apologies often present participants with hypothetical scenarios. This article reports on an experimental study of children's reactions to experiencing an actual disappointment and subsequent apology. Participants (ages four to seven) were told that another child was supposed to share some attractive stickers with them. In the two primary conditions, the other child kept the stickers for himself or herself. Some participants received an apology from the other child, whereas others did not. Compared with children who did not receive the apology, the apology recipients: (1) reported feeling better; (2) viewed the other child as more remorseful; and (3) rated the other child as nicer. Support was found for a mediation model of apology: the positive effects of the apology on children's emotions were accounted for by the effective signaling of remorse by the wrongdoer.

AbstractCan young children frame their own choices in terms of moral considerations, particularly when those choices do not match the practices of immediate authority figures? To answer this question, we studied 6‐ to 10‐year‐old independent vegetarians—children who have elected to become vegetarians, despite being raised in non‐vegetarian families. In Study 1, these children were asked about their reasons for not eating meat; their replies were compared with those made by vegetarian children from vegetarian families (family vegetarians) and non‐vegetarian children from non‐vegetarian families (non‐vegetarians). Unlike the other two groups, independent vegetarians universally focused on the suffering that meat eating implies for animals but, surprisingly, they did not condemn others for meat eating. Study 2 attempted to explain this tolerance by examining if children focus on whether an individual has made a commitment to not eating meat. All three groups of children condemned meat eating by morally committed vegetarians, but not by those who have made no such commitment. The two studies show that independent vegetarians are committed to not eating meat on moral grounds and judge that it would be wrong to break that commitment. Nevertheless, like non‐vegetarian children, they remain tolerant toward people who have made no such commitment.