Tóm tắt
Two studies with 3–, 4–, and 5–year–olds (N= 104) examined whether young children can differentiate expertise in the minds of others. Study 1 revealed that all children in the sample could correctly attribute observable knowledge to familiar experts (i.e., a doctor and a car mechanic). Further, 4– and 5–year–olds could correctly attribute knowledge of underlying scientific principles to the appropriate experts. In contrast, Study 2 demonstrated that 3–, 4–, and 5–year–olds have difficulty making attributions of knowledge of scientific principles to unfamiliar experts. A computational analysis in Study 3 indicated that 4– and 5–year–olds’ successes on the first two studies could not be attributed to the way in which words co–occur in discourse. Overall, these studies showed that young children have a sense of the division of cognitive labor, albeit fragile.
