The Collaborative Nature of Testimonial Learning

Children's testimonial learning often occurs in epistemic collaborations with others. In this paper, we will discuss ways in which cultural learning emerges in social and interpersonal contexts, and is intrinsically supported and guided by children's collaborative capacities. Much work in cultural learning has focused on children's examination of speaker and model characteristics, but more recent research has investigated the interactive aspects of testimonial exchanges. We will review evidence that children (1) participate in the interpersonal commitments that are shared in testimonial transactions by way of direct address and epistemic buck passing, (2) participate in social groups that affect their selective learning in nuanced ways, and (3) may detect epistemic harms by listeners who refuse to believe sincere and accurate speakers. Implications for conceptualizing children's testimonial learning as an interactive mechanism of collaboration will be discussed. Children's testimonial learning often occurs in epistemic collaborations with others, which enable distinct forms of trust to operate that grant them access to information about the world. By examining children's conversational practices, their group-based biases and assumptions, and their sensitivity to epistemic harms, we suggest that children evaluate speakers in terms of their epistemic credentials and social characteristics while at the same time holding them interpersonally responsible for their claims.