Children have a powerful ability to track probabilistic information, but there are also situations in which young learners simply follow what another person says or does at the cost of obtaining rewards. This latter phenomenon, sometimes termed bias to trust in testimony, has primarily been studied in children preschool-age and younger, presumably…

In a hidden inequality context, resource allocators and resource recipients are unaware that an unknowingly advantaged recipient possesses resources. The present study presented children aged 3-13 years (N = 121) with a hidden inequality vignette involving an accidental transgression in which one resource claimant, who unknowingly possessed more…

This research presented 8-, 10-, and 12-year-olds (N = 120) with hypothetical situations depicting comparably aged children engaging in defiance and deception to circumvent authorities' directives that they disagreed with. The nature of the situations varied in terms of domain (personal, moral, or prudential) and type of authority figure (parent…

Children's epistemic vigilance was examined for their reasoning about the intentions and outcomes of informants' past testimony. In a 2 x 2 factorial design, 5- and 6-year-olds witnessed informants offering advice based on the intent to help or deceive others about the location of hidden prizes, with the advice leading to positive or negative…