{"pk":27746,"title":"Cognitive pragmatism: Children flexibly choose between facts and conjectures.","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Abundant work has looked at children’s ability to appropri-\nately reject testimonies and unverified claims (Butler et al,\n2017; Frazier, Gelman, & Wellman, 2009; Koenig, Clement,\n& Harris, 2004). However, sometimes our current knowledge\nis insufficient for solving a problem. In these cases, we should\nreject unsatisfying facts and prefer satisfying, if speculative,\nconjectures. In two studies, we gave 4-7 year-old children\n(Study 1, N=66; Study 2, N=32) questions that either could\nor could not be answered with available information. For each\nquestion, children made a binary choice between a factual an-\nswer citing information from the story or a conjectural answer\nthat made unverified claims. Across age groups, children suc-\ncessfully chose the more satisfying response regardless of its\ntruth value: children chose facts for questions with known an-\nswers and conjectures for questions with unknown answers.\nThese findings suggest that children will go beyond known in-\nformation to endorse unverified claims when they satisfy the\nquestion-under-discussion.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Cognitive Development"},{"word":"Explanations"}],"section":"Publication-based-Talks","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/20r8d5j3","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Junyi","middle_name":"","last_name":"Chu","name_suffix":"","institution":"Massachusetts Institute of Technology","department":""},{"first_name":"Laura","middle_name":"","last_name":"Schulz","name_suffix":"","institution":"Massachusetts Institute of Technology","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2018-01-01T13:00:00-05:00","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/27746/galley/17386/download/"}]}