Mechanisms of Belief Formation in Childhood

How do children form beliefs from testimony? Previous work with adults suggests a "Spinozan" account of belief formation on which propositions are accepted as true by default, and rejecting them is effortful. But it is unclear whether this asymmetry between accepting and rejection propositions arises because people learn that others generally say true things or because of the cognitive architecture supporting belief formation. To distinguish between these accounts, we presented 3- to 8-year-olds with statements about a novel animal that were confirmed or denied by a knowledgeable expert. Children with poorer executive function misremembered denied statements more often than confirmed ones. A second experiment confirmed that these results did not reflect a "yes bias", and that children could select the expert's testimony over the novice's when these were pitted against each other. Together, these results suggest that rejecting statements is challenging because of the cognitive architecture supporting belief formation.