摘要：Objectives: This study aimed to investigate whether children’s evaluation of information provided by an informant differs depending on the intuitiveness of the information provided, the presence of and types of additional explanations, and the age of the child. Methods: The participants were 158 children, aged 4 to 5 years, from eight child-care centers located in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. Each child was interviewed individually, after completing a pre-test for measures of language comprehension. Results: First, when the informant provided information on physical and biological phenomena, children were more likely to evaluate intuitive information as plausible, compared to counterintuitive information. In addition, 5-year-olds were less likely than 4-year-olds to evaluate counterintuitive information as plausible. Second, after an explanation was added, children were more likely to evaluate counterintuitive information as plausible, when this explanation was causal rather than descriptive or circular. Third, the addition of an explanation was likely to result in the evaluation of intuitive information as less plausible, and counterintuitive information as more plausible. Conclusion: Based on children's evaluation of information about physical and biological phenomena presented to them, this study confirmed that 4- and 5-year-old children were able to independently evaluate the plausibility of information, depending on the intuitiveness of the information, and the presence of and types of explanations. It also revealed that with increasing age, children become more skeptical about the plausibility of counterintuitive information, and demonstrated epistemic vigilance even when presented with intuitive information with an explanation.
关键词：evaluation of information;intuitiveness of information;types of explanation;plausibility of information;physical and biological phenomena
