Are Children’s Judgments of Another’s Accuracy Linked to Their Metacognitive Confidence Judgments?

The world can be a confusing place, which leads to a significant challenge: how do we figure out what is true? To accomplish this, children possess two relevant skills: reasoning about the likelihood of their own accuracy (metacognitive confidence) and reasoning about the likelihood of others’ accuracy (mindreading). Guided by Signal Detection Theory and Simulation Theory, we examine whether these two self- and other-oriented skills are one in the same, relying on a single cognitive process. Specifically, Signal Detection Theory proposes that confidence in a decision is purely derived from the imprecision of that decision, predicting a tight correlation between decision accuracy and confidence. Simulation Theory further proposes that children attribute their own cognitive experience to others when reasoning socially. Together, these theories predict that children’s self and other reasoning should be highly correlated and dependent on decision accuracy. In four studies (N = 374), children aged 4–7 completed a confidence reasoning task and selective social learning task each designed to eliminate confounding language and response biases, enabling us to isolate the unique correlation between self and other reasoning. However, in three of the four studies, we did not find that individual differences on the two tasks correlated, nor that decision accuracy explained performance. These findings suggest self and other reasoning are either independent in childhood, or the result of a single process that operates differently for self and others.

世间万象纷繁复杂，由此衍生出重大难题：我们如何辨识真相？为解决此问题，儿童具备两项至关重要的能力：一是对自身准确性可能性的推理（元认知自信），二是对他人准确性可能性的推理（心灵解读）。在信号检测理论及模拟理论的指导下，本研究旨在探讨这两种以自我为中心与以他人为中心的推理能力是否本质相同，是否依赖单一的认知过程。具体而言，信号检测理论提出，决策的信心纯粹源自决策的不确定性，预测决策准确性与信心之间存在着紧密的相关性。模拟理论进一步提出，儿童在社会推理过程中将自身的认知经验归因于他人。这两大理论共同预测，儿童的自我推理与他人推理应高度相关，并依赖于决策的准确性。在四项研究中（N=374），4至7岁的儿童完成了信心推理任务和选择性社会学习任务，这两个任务均旨在消除干扰的语言和反应偏差，从而使我们能够隔离自我推理与他人推理之间的独特相关性。然而，在四项研究中，有三项未发现两项任务中的个体差异存在相关性，决策准确性也无法解释表现。这些发现表明，在儿童阶段，自我推理与他人推理要么是相互独立的，要么是源于单一过程，但该过程在自我与他人推理中运作方式不同。