Lori Markson - US grants

Young children can quickly learn the meaning of a new word after a brief, incidental exposure to the word and its referent, a process often described as "fast mapping". Little is known about the mechanism underlying this ability. More recent research reveals that this rapid learning ability is not specific to words; children, and adults, can quickly learn arbitrary facts about objects, and they rememember this information for a long time. The proposed research explores the nature and development of this learning capacity. The research investigates (1) the development of rapid learning about words and objects in the second year of life, and (2) the kinds of object properties that such children can learn rapidly and retain for extended periods. Finally, the research will begin to investigate the earlier ontogeny and phylogeny of these capacities through studies of pre-linguistic human infants and non-linguistic monkeys. The first series of studies compares 13- and 18-month-old infants' ability to learn about words and properties of objects. The next series of studies investigates the kinds of object properties infants are most adept at learning and remembering over time. A final series of studies examines whether fast mapping abilities are specific to language learners by testing pre-linguistic infants and non-linguistic monkeys.

Trust – the belief in the truth, reliability, or ability of another person to do a promised action – is a cornerstone of everyday social interactions and relationships. Trust is also vital to many aspects of children’s development: they must decide who they should trust in order to learn new information (i.e., epistemic trust) and who they can trust for social support, reassurance, or to keep a promise (i.e., social trust). This project investigates how young children decide whether to trust a person who is unrelated and unfamiliar to them. The project will advance our understanding of how children’s epistemic and social trust judgments differ and yield new insights into how children’s racial backgrounds and experiences, and socioeconomic environments impact the development of trust in early childhood. The results will also benefit society by providing educators with better tools to work with children in diverse contexts.

This project tests the hypothesis that children consider different factors in their epistemic and social trust decisions. Although children’s epistemic trust judgments have recently received considerable attention, little research has explored children’s social trust judgments or directly tested whether the two types of judgments operate differently. It is hypothesized that young children’s epistemic trust judgments are based primarily on an individual’s prior accuracy, whereas their social trust judgments will be influenced by social group membership. The project focuses on two social categories, race and socioeconomic status (SES), which have not previously been investigated in young children’s trust judgments. To address these novel predictions, two age groups, infants and preschoolers, will participate in a series of behavioral experiments that examine the role of accuracy, race, and socioeconomic status in trust judgments. The project will be conducted in three locations in the country with distinct participant samples and contexts. Thus, the findings will have the potential to uncover the underlying mechanisms of environmental influences on young children’s trust in others.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.