Coming to Know That You Know,
How You Know,
and What You Know
Liz Robinson
Keele University and Birmingham University, UK
[email protected]
[email protected]
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3 interlinked sections:
I. Coming to know that you know –
Implicit to explicit representations of knowledge
II. Coming to know how you know –
Deliberate seeking of informative knowledge sources
III. Coming to know what you know –
Considering reality within a context of possibilities
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I. Coming to know that you know –
Implicit to explicit representations of knowledge
On what grounds do we impute knowledge or understanding
to the child?
What do we expect her to do to demonstrate knowledge?
Whether or not the child demonstrates knowledge or
understanding of a concept depends on the output required.
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Example 1: Assuming object permanence
•Objects continue to exist in space and time even when out of
perceptual contact
•A well-adapted invention not a discovery
•Wired in or constructed?
•If constructed over what time-span?
•What must infant do to demonstrate she
assumes object permanence?
-Piaget (1954):
search for a hidden object. Success at 10 to 18 months
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Baillargeon (1987) 3,4,5 mth infants
Does baby look longer at an impossible event
- a solid object apparently moving through the space
occupied by another solid object?
Drawbridge experiment
Impossible event:
Drawbridge goes through
space occupied by barrier
Baby
Possible events:
(i) drawbridge stops at barrier
(ii) no barrier
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Spelke (1994)
Infants 4 mths. Looking time measure.
Ball seen moving behind occluder.
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Possible events
Impossible events
Ball appears to have moved
through space occupied by
barrier.
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4 month olds look longer at impossible events.
Similar results when ball dropped behind screen
and then screen removed to reveal ball has
either landed on shelf (possible)
or below shelf (impossible) event.
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Hood, Carey & Prasada (2000)
Search versions of Spelke’s tasks
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• Ball dropped behind screen
• Screen removed
• Child retrieves ball
Familiarise with no shelf condition, then introduce
shelf with cups on shelf and below shelf.
2 yr olds repeatedly search in lower cup.
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Baillargeon, Spelke:
looking times suggest early knowledge (4mths)
Piaget, Hood:
search times suggest late knowledge (12-24 mths)
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Similar differentiation at later age in different
domain –
Theory of mind
The commonsense framework we use to make
sense of people’s behaviour – desires, beliefs,
intentions.
Adults differentiate what somebody thinks is
true, from what is really true.
We treat people as if they have an internal
representation of reality which can be inaccurate.
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Standard test of false belief understanding
(Wimmer & Perner, 1983)
Maxi puts his ball in the red box.
Maxi leaves the scene
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Dad moves the ball to the
blue box
Maxi doesn’t see Dad
move the ball
Maxi doesn’t know the
ball is in the blue box
now.
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Maxi wants his ball.
Where will he look first?
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'Where will Maxi look for his ball first?'
4-5 yrs: ‘Red box’
- acknowledging Maxi has a false belief about ball's location.
3 yrs: ‘Blue box’ - a realist error.
They judge as if Maxi's belief accords with theirs.
• Even when they agree Maxi didn’t see the Dad move the ball
• Even when told Maxi doesn’t know the ball has moved.
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Implicit understanding:
Clements & Perner (1994).
“I wonder where he’s going to look?”
• Measure eye direction
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Eyes look to false location
(correct) but
child subsequently points to
true location (incorrect).
Similar effect with
spontaneous gesture
vs reflective point “Quick, catch him!”
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Possible interpretations (not mutually exclusive):
(i) looking studies over-estimate conceptual understanding;
(ii) searching studies under-estimate;
(iii) different measures tap different types of
knowledge representation
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(i) Looking studies over-estimate conceptual understanding
Bogartz (1997)
Infants’ looking results can be interpreted in terms of
perceptual processes.
• Infant makes comparisons between immediate
Perceptual input and what is in associative memory.
Looking time is related to degree of mismatch.
• Explains drawbridge results without assuming any
knowledge of occluded object.
• General strategy: don’t impute conceptual understanding
unnecessarily.
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(ii) Searching studies under-estimate competence
e.g. Problems with executive control –
Child has difficulty inhibiting prepotent response
in search tasks. True competence is masked.
• General strategy: check that ‘genuine’ understanding is
not masked by task demands.
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(iii) Measures tap different types of knowledge representation
• Strength of representation
Need ‘stronger’ representation for prediction than
for recognizing violation of expectancy?
Keyong & Spelke (1999).
3-4 year olds view launching of object off cliff
– judge impossible trajectories to look silly,
but predict landing location vertically down.
• Implicit vs explicit representation
E.g. Karmiloff-Smith (1992)
Dienes & Perner (1999)
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Karmiloff-Smith
Process of re-representation:
‘a specifically human way to gain knowledge
is for the mind to exploit internally the information
that it has already stored, by…. re-representing in
different representational formats what its internal
representations represent’
Examples – playing piano; drawing man with 2 heads.
Four levels –
Implicit (behavioural mastery; knowledge not available
to the system);
Explicit E1 (still not available to consciousness);
E2/3 (explicit verbal report).
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Dienes & Perner (1999)
What is represented:
Implicit: only content of knowledge represented: ‘cat’
(various levels in between)
Explicit: content + propositional attitude represented:
‘I know this is a cat’
In both accounts, most explicit level of representation
is ‘knowing that you know’.
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Donald Rumsfeld (2003)
US defence secretary:
“…. There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know
there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know
we don’t know.”
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Coming to know that you know
Summary and further questions:
1. We impute knowledge on the basis of output
2. Infants: Looking times imply knowledge not revealed by search
3. Childhood: looking direction and spontaneous search imply
knowledge not revealed by reflective response
4. The same knowledge can be represented in different ways,
on dimension implicit to fully verbally explicit
5. At implicit level, child simply knows
6. At most explicit level, child knows that she knows
What are the disadvantages of simply knowing?
What are the benefits and costs of knowing that you know?
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II. Coming to know how you know –
Deliberate seeking of informative knowledge sources
Knowing that you don’t know – impetus to finding out?
• Direct vs indirect sources of knowledge
• Knowing what kind of knowledge we get from what source
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These look the same but feel different, one hard, one soft
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These feel the same but look different
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Child agrees the toys look the same
but one hard, one soft
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One toy slipped into tunnel
Which one?
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Child decides whether to look or feel
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Child then has other mode of access.
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Finally child asked “Which one is it? How do you know….?”
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1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
3-4 yrs
4-5 yrs
adult
Choice
Source
Choice: “Do you need to see or feel to find out if it’s
the hard one or the soft one?”
Source: (having both seen and felt) “How do you know it’s
the hard one?”
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3-4 yr olds poor at:
• Predicting what knowledge they will get from looking or feeling.
• Reporting how they got to know.
• Standard interpretation of poor performance:
3-4 yr olds do not understand connection
between information access and knowledge state.
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Identifying precursors of explicit understanding:
1. Test explicit understanding of ‘simpler’ concepts
e.g. epistemic vs non-epistemic access (Pillow, 1993)
• 3 yr olds judge its better to look inside a box
than to stand on top, to find out what’s inside.
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2. Test ‘simpler’ representations of same concepts
•Experimenter places toy out of reach
‘Which one is it?’
Does child say ‘hard one’ before feeling? NO
Does child say ‘red one’ before feeling? YES
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4
3.5
No. of times
Child feels toy
before saying
identity
3
2.5
Feel trial
See trial
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
3-4 yrs
Adult
Feel trial: toy hard or soft
See trial: toy red or blue
3-4 yr olds behave as if they know when seeing is uninformative
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Is 3-4 yr old more likely to believe what she’s told by a
well-informed speaker than a poorly-informed speaker?
YES
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One toy slipped into tunnel
Which one?
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Experimenter invites child to have a look.
“Which one do you think it is?” “The soft one”
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Experimenter feels “I’ll say which one I think it is – the
hard one”
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Identity judgment: “Which one is it?”
Source judgment: “How do you know…..?”
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Number of times
child accepts
experimenter’s
suggestion
2
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
3-4 yrs
Adult
Both guessing
Experimenter
informed
3-4 yr olds behave as if they understand about information access,
even though they perform poorly on tasks which demand explicit
understanding.
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Coming to know how you know
Summary and further questions:
1. Knowing that you don’t know provides impetus
for active seeking of knowledge
2. Knowledge gained from direct and indirect sources
3. 3-4 yr olds lack reflective, explicit knowledge of sources
of information
4. But they behave as if they do understand
What are the disadvantages of having only working
understanding about sources of knowledge?
What are the benefits and costs of achieving reflective
understanding?
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III. Coming to know what you know –
Considering reality within a context of possibilities
1. Considering what actually happened in the context of
what could have happened instead
and what could happen in the future
2. Differentiating interpretations of reality from ‘reality’ itself
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Counterfactuals & Future Hypotheticals:
Counterfactuals
Thinking about what might have
been, but isn’t.
Typical developmental task:
Jenny makes a painting and leaves it
on the garden table. The wind blows
the painting up into a tree.
“What if the wind hadn’t blown?
Where would the picture be?”
Riggs et al, 1998
4 years olds answer these questions
correctly.
Future Hypotheticals
Speculating about a future event
“What if next time…?”
Future: “What if next time he drives
the other way, where will he be?”
Counterfactual: “What if he had
driven the other way, where would
he be?”
3yr olds good at future
hypotheticals.
(Riggs et al, 1998; Robinson & Beck,
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2000; Perner et al 2004)
When 4 yr olds answer hypothetical and counterfactual
questions correctly,
are they really thinking about possibilities?
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The slide task
Barriers
Cotton wool
Future hypothetical: “What if next time he goes the other way?”
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Undetermined: “Can you put out cotton wool?”
Future: “What if next time he goes the other way?”
Undetermined: “Can you put out cotton wool?”
2.0
Future hypotheticals
are easier than
undetermined for both
age groups
1.5
1.0
Similar pattern with
counterfactuals vs
undetermined
Mean
.5
Undetermined
0.0
Future Hypothetical
3-4 yrs
4-5 yrs
AGEGRP
5-6 yr olds near ceiling
on all tasks
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• 3-4 year olds can think about an event in the future
• 4-5 yr olds can think about an event which could have
happened in the past but didn’t
• 5-6 yr olds can represent two possible outcomes
of a single event.
Beginning of mental separation of ‘reality’ from
‘interpretations of reality’
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Coming to know what you know
Summary and further questions
1. 3 yr olds can think about events beyond the here and now
2. 4 yr olds can think about an event that could have happened
but didn’t
3. 5-6 yr olds can represent possible events and begin to
differentiate interpretations of reality from reality itself
What are the disadvantages of being confined to the here and now?
What are the benefits and costs of considering reality within a
set of possible alternatives?
What are the benefits and costs of differentiating reality from
interpretation?
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Summary and questions for the future
I. Coming to know that you know:
problems of imputing knowledge on the basis of output
implicit to explicit knowledge
knowing that you know - knowing that you don’t know
II. Coming to know how you know:
direct and indirect sources of knowledge
knowing how to find out
knowing how you got to know
implicit to explicit knowledge
III. Coming to know what you know:
differentiating reality from possibilities
necessarily explicit?
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Summary and questions for the future continued
How to differentiate ‘wrong’ metacognition from no
metacognition?
How does system divide resources between cognition and
metacognition?
How do explicit representations feed back to implicit ones?
How do explicit representations influence behaviour?
How does system learn about sources of knowledge,
especially indirect sources?
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