Children’s Trust: How Children Decide Who Is Trustworthy and Why That Is Important for Parents and Educators to Understand
Summary: <a href="http://icd.umn.edu/people/mkoenig/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"></a>We often think of infants and very young children as being naively trusting and ready to believe what any adult tells them.<br> <br> <br> <br> But <a href="http://icd.umn.edu/people/mkoenig/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Melissa Koenig</a>, professor in the <a href="https://twin-cities.umn.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">U of M</a>’s <a href="http://www.icd.umn.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Institute of Child Development</a>, is part of a team of children’s trust researchers who are showing that even babies know how to be skeptics. These provocative findings raise important questions about how children’s trust enters in to learning and how parents and teachers can earn the trust of children and help them build their ability to recognize honesty at a time when it’s often hard to come by. (Thank you to the U’s <a href="http://www.cehd.umn.edu/news/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">College of Education and Human Development</a> for providing this week’s guest.)<br> <br> <br> <br> What was surprising to you about Melissa Koenig’s findings about young children’s trust? Marti & Erin and their guest talked about the need for parents to be “transparent” with their kids and to only make promises they can keep. Give some real-life examples of when this advice could be implemented.<br> <br> <br> <br> For Can children save us from the fake news epidemic?, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/can-children-save-us-fake-news-epidemic-ncna830316" target="_blank" rel="noopener">click here</a>.<br> <br> To watch Trust Through the Eyes of Children, <a href="http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/trust-project/videos/koenig-trust-through-the-eyes-of-children-a-psychologists-perspective.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">click here</a>.<br> <br> For Melissa's Early Language and Experience Lab, <a href="http://icd.umn.edu/elel/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">click here</a>.<br> <br> For the U of M’s College of Education and Human Development, <a href="https://z.umn.edu/momenough" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">click here</a>.<br> <br> For Melissa's ME show discussing learning a second language, <a href="http://momenough.com/2015/08/learning-a-second-language" target="_blank" rel="noopener">click here</a>.<br> <br> For more on the marshmallow experiment, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment" target="_blank" rel="noopener">click here</a>.
