Kondrad, R. L., & Jaswal, V. K. (in press). Explaining the errors away: Young children forgive understandable semantic mistakes. Cognitive Development.
Abstract
Errors can differ in how serious they are. We asked whether preschoolers would use the magnitude of an informant's errors to decide if she would be a good source of information later. 4- and 5-year-olds heard two informants incorrectly label familiar objects, but one informant's errors were closer to the correct answer than the other's (e.g., one referred to a comb as a brush and the other referred to the same comb as a thunderstorm). When the informants had an unambiguous view of the objects, children could identify which informant was closer to being correct, but they did not selectively favor novel labels the "closer" informant later provided. When the informants had only an ambiguous view of the objects (e.g., only the handle of hte comb was visible), children did prefer the novel labels the "closer" informant later provided. Preschoolers are willing to overlook semantic errors that are close to being correct, but only when there is an understandable reason why the speaker erred.