2002 — 2003 |
Koenig, Melissa A |
F32Activity Code Description: To provide postdoctoral research training to individuals to broaden their scientific background and extend their potential for research in specified health-related areas. |
The Development of Children's Trust in Testimony
DESCRIPTION (provided by candidate): The proposed research is designed to advance current thinking on children's evaluation and use of testimony. By assessing what factors influence children's willingness to believe the testimony of others, the current research proposal aims to shed light on the safeguards children of different ages may utilize to protect themselves from false, misleading or otherwise problematic information. Experiments 1 and 2 will examine the extent to which young children, aged 2-5, are able to monitor and use the truth of the assertions made by individual informants to gauge the reliability of subsequent testimony. Experiments 3 and 4 assess whether children not only monitor the truth of an individual's assertion but also whether assertions are appropriately justified or not. Children aged 3-4, 5-6 and 7-8 years as well as adults will be asked to accept or reject the novel claims of characters who differ in terms of whether their prior claims were (i) true or false and (ii) justified or unjustified. Given that the utility of testimony as a source of information likely depends on what kind of information is being evaluated, Experiments 1 and 3 focus on assertions provided in the context of object naming whereas Experiments 2 and 4 focus on assertions provided in discussion of object function. In Experiment 5, the conditions under which children spontaneously (i~ query the truth of an assertion or (ii) ask for an assertion to be justified will be examined. An assessment of children's abilities to evaluate other's testimony will provide a window into children's use of one of our most valuable information sources - other human agents.
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0.957 |
2014 — 2018 |
Cicchetti, Dante Cicchetti (co-PI) [⬀] Koenig, Melissa A Rogosch, Fred A [⬀] |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Child Maltreatment and Children's Trust @ University of Rochester
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Child maltreatment is a complex, insidious problem that exerts an astronomical toll on individuals, families, and society. Advancing knowledge regarding the early developmental processes that contribute to adverse outcomes in maltreated children is thus of high public health significance. The development of trust in young children is an expanding area of inquiry. In addition to further investigation of normative processes in trust competencies, limited research has been conducted to elucidate contributors to individual differences in trust development. Significantly, no research has investigated trust in maltreated children, despite the likelihood of trust capacities being jeopardized in these youngsters. Accordingly, research on emerging trust in maltreated children would address a critical barrier to understanding important, unstudied impairments in early social development that have crucial implications for subsequent interpersonal and relationship functioning in maltreated individuals, and consequent mental health liabilities. In the present application, we propose to recruit 300 36- to 42-month-old children from low income families; 150 children will have a history of child maltreatment and 150 will have no maltreatment history. The children and their mothers will participate in four laboratory sessions to assess components of epistemic trust, self- reliance vs. deference in trust decision-making, and source memory. The three epistemic trust tasks vary in terms of the degree of cognitive vs. socio-affective sources of information. Mother-child attachment security, theory of mind/false belief understanding, and inhibitory control also will be assessed. Additionally, separate Event Related Potential assessments will be conducted with stimuli yoked to that used in the three epistemic trust assessments. Accordingly, the measurements to be obtained constitute a multilevel assessment of diverse domains that are implicated in contributing to individual differences in the development of children's early trust capacities. Moreover, investigation of these domains holds great promise for identifying mechanisms that may contribute to difficulties that young maltreated children are likely to exhibit in the development of trust. Assessing the consequences of maltreatment occurring in the first three years of life on children's ability to develop trust in others has important implications for their social, interpersonal, and affective development, as well as subsequent mental health. The research also will greatly expand the understanding of normative trust development. This research will have important implications for public health. In addition to advancing knowledge regarding the multilevel developmental roots of early difficulties in trust development, the research will provide valuable direction for early prevention and intervention strategies. Given the multiple mechanisms that are likely to be identified in contributing to early, compromised trust development, insights into different intervention targets will be elucidated.
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0.958 |