Trusting what you're told [electronic resource] : how children learn from others / Paul L. Harris.
Harris, Paul L., 1946-
2012
BF318 .H363 2012eb
Available Online

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Title Trusting what you're told [electronic resource] : how children learn from others / Paul L. Harris.
Author Harris, Paul L., 1946-
ISBN 9780674065192 electronic book
9780674065727
Imprint Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012.
Language English
Description 1 online resource (253 p.) : ill.
Call Number BF318 .H363 2012eb
Dewey Decimal Classification 155.4/1315
Summary If children were little scientists who learn best through firsthand observations and mini-experiments, as conventional wisdom holds, how would a child discover that the earth is round-never mind conceive of heaven as a place someone might go after death? Overturning both cognitive and commonplace theories about how children learn, Trusting What You're Told begins by reminding us of a basic truth: Most of what we know we learned from others. Children recognize early on that other people are an excellent source of information. And so they ask questions. But youngsters are also remarkably discriminating as they weigh the responses they elicit. And how much they trust what they are told has a lot to do with their assessment of its source. This book opens a window into the moral reasoning of elementary school vegetarians, the preschooler's ability to distinguish historical narrative from fiction, and the six-year-old's nuanced stance toward magic: skeptical, while still open to miracles. Paul Harris shares striking cross-cultural findings, too, such as that children in religious communities in rural Central America resemble Bostonian children in being more confident about the existence of germs and oxygen than they are about souls and God. We are biologically designed to learn from one another, Harris demonstrates, and this greediness for explanation marks a key difference between human beings and our primate cousins. Even Kanzi, a genius among bonobos, never uses his keyboard to ask for information: he asks only for treats.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references (p. [222]-241) and index.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
Source of Description Description based on print version record.
Available in Other Form Trusting what you're told.
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All Resources
Early learning from testimony
Children's questions
Learning from a demonstration
Moroccan birds and twisted tubes
Trusting those you know?
Consensus and dissent
Moral judgment and testimony
Knowing what is real
Death and the afterlife
Magic and miracles
Going native.

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