Jaswal, V. K., & Neely, L. A. (2006). Adults don't always know best: Preschoolers use past reliability over age when learning new words. Psychological Science, 17, 757-758.
Abstract
Children learn much of what they know—from words to their birthdates to the fact that the earth is round—from what other people tell them. But not everyone is an equally good informant. One way they can estimate the credibility of a speaker is by evaluating how reliable that person has been in the past. Even preschoolers prefer learning new words from an adult who has previously correctly labeled objects rather than one who has incorrectly done so (Koenig, Clement, & Harris, 2004). Children may also make predictions about a speaker based on that person's membership in a particular group. For example, 4-year-olds expect that an unfamiliar adult, but not necessarily an unfamiliar child, would know the meaning of the word hypochondriac (Taylor, Cartwright, & Bowden, 1991). Which of these two cues to a speaker's credibility—reliability or age—do 3- and 4-year-old children find more compelling?