Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

Exposure to detectable inaccuracies makes children more diligent fact-checkers of novel claims

Nature Human Behaviour volume 8, pages 2322–2329 (2024)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

How do children decide when to believe a claim? Here we show that children fact-check claims more and are better able to catch misinformation when they have been exposed to detectable inaccuracies. In two experiments (N = 122), 4–7-year-old children exposed to falsity (as opposed to all true information) sampled more evidence before verifying a test claim in a novel domain. Children’s evidentiary standards were graded: fact-checking increased with higher proportions of false statements heard during exposure. A simulation suggests that children’s behaviour is adaptive, because increased fact-checking in more dubious environments supports the discovery of potential misinformation. Importantly, children were least diligent at fact-checking a new claim when all prior information was true, suggesting that sanitizing children’s informational environments may inadvertently dampen their natural scepticism. Instead, these findings support the counterintuitive possibility that exposing children to some nonsense may scaffold vigilance towards more subtle misinformation in the future.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Test phase, identical in studies 1 and 2.
Fig. 2: Children sampled more evidence in the unreliable condition (n = 30 per condition).
Fig. 3: Children (N = 62) sampled more evidence as the reliability of their environments decreased.
Fig. 4: Misinformation is more likely to be detected in unreliable environments.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

Data for all experiments are available at https://osf.io/7hxkt/.

Code availability

Code for the simulation and analyses is available at https://osf.io/7hxkt/.

References

  1. Brown, A. S. & Nix, L. A. Turning lies into truths: referential validation of falsehoods. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn., Mem. Cogn. 22, 1088 (1996).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Fazio, L. K. & Sherry, C. L. The effect of repetition on truth judgments across development. Psychol. Sci. 31, 1150–1160 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Fazio, L. K., Brashier, N. M., Payne, B. K. & Marsh, E. J. Knowledge does not protect against illusory truth. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 144, 993 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Kidd, C. & Birhane, A. How AI can distort human beliefs. Science 380, 1222–1223 (2023).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Xu, S., Shtulman, A. & Young, A. G. Can children detect fake news? In Proc. Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (eds Culbertson, J. et al.) 2988–2993 (Cognitive Science Society, 2022).

  6. Jaswal, V. K., Croft, A. C., Setia, A. R. & Cole, C. A. Young children have a specific, highly robust bias to trust testimony. Psychol. Sci. 21, 1541–1547 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Plate, R. C., Shutts, K., Cochrane, A., Green, C. S. & Pollak, S. D. Testimony bias lingers across development under uncertainty. Dev. Psychol. 57, 2150 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  8. Hermansen, T. K., Ronfard, S., Harris, P. L. & Zambrana, I. M. Preschool children rarely seek empirical data that could help them complete a task when observation and testimony conflict. Child Dev. 92, 2546–2562 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Ecker, U. K. et al. The psychological drivers of misinformation belief and its resistance to correction. Nat. Rev. Psychol. 1, 13–29 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Poll, M. Sharing too soon? Children and social media apps. C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital https://mottpoll.org/reports/sharing-too-soon-children-and-social-media-apps/ (2021).

  11. New Survey Reveals Teens Get Their News from Social Media and YouTube (Common Sense Media, 2019).

  12. New Poll Finds Parents Lag Behind Kids on AI and Want Rules and Reliable Information to Help Them (Common Sense Media, 2023).

  13. Rodriguez, A. YouTube Kids is giving parents more control over what their kids watch. Quartz https://qz.com/1262977/youtube-kids-is-launching-a-mode-curated-by-humans-not-just-algorithms/ (2018).

  14. The disturbing YouTube videos that are tricking children. BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-39381889 (2017).

  15. Maheshwari, S. On YouTube Kids, startling videos slip past filters. The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/business/media/youtube-kids-paw-patrol.html/ (2017).

  16. Kallioniemi, P. The role of human curation at the age of algorithms. J. Digit. Media Interact. 4, 7–20 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

  17. Lewandowsky, S. & Van Der Linden, S. Countering misinformation and fake news through inoculation and prebunking. Eur. Rev. Soc. Psychol. 32, 348–384 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Compton, J., van der Linden, S., Cook, J. & Basol, M. Inoculation theory in the post‐truth era: extant findings and new frontiers for contested science, misinformation, and conspiracy theories. Soc. Pers. Psychol. Compass 15, e12602 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. van der Linden, S. Misinformation: susceptibility, spread, and interventions to immunize the public. Nat. Med. 28, 460–467 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  20. Basol, M., Roozenbeek, J. & Van der Linden, S. Good news about bad news: gamified inoculation boosts confidence and cognitive immunity against fake news. J. Cogn. 3, 2 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  21. Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S. & Nygren, T. Prebunking interventions based on the psychological theory of ‘inoculation’ can reduce susceptibility to misinformation across cultures. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review https://doi.org/10.37016//mr-2020-008 (2020).

  22. van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., Rosenthal, S. & Maibach, E. Inoculating the public against misinformation about climate change. Glob. Chall. 1, 1600008 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  23. Wong, N. C. H. ‘Vaccinations are safe and effective’: inoculating positive HPV vaccine attitudes against antivaccination attack messages. Commun. Rep. 29, 127–138 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Braddock, K. Vaccinating against hate: using attitudinal inoculation to confer resistance to persuasion by extremist propaganda. Terror. Polit. Violence 34, 240–262 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Maertens, R., Roozenbeek, J., Basol, M. & van der Linden, S. Long-term effectiveness of inoculation against misinformation: three longitudinal experiments. J. Exp. Psychol. Appl. 27, 1–16 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  26. Capewell, G. et al. Misinformation interventions decay rapidly without an immediate posttest. J. Appl. Social Psychol. 54, 441–454 (2023).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Guay, B., Berinsky, A. J., Pennycook, G. & Rand, D. How to think about whether misinformation interventions work. Nat. Hum. Behav. 7, 1231–1233 (2023).

  28. Williams, D. The fake news about fake news. Boston Review https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-fake-news-about-fake-news/ (2023).

  29. Chan, M. P. S. & Albarracín, D. A meta-analysis of correction effects in science-relevant misinformation. Nat. Hum. Behav. 7, 1514–1525 (2023).

  30. Modirrousta-Galian, A. & Higham, P. A. Gamified inoculation interventions do not improve discrimination between true and fake news: reanalyzing existing research with receiver operating characteristic analysis. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 152, 2411–2437 (2023).

  31. Finn, B. & Metcalfe, J. Overconfidence in children’s multi-trial judgments of learning. Learn. Instr. 32, 1–9 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Lipko, A. R. et al. Using standards to improve middle school students’ accuracy at evaluating the quality of their recall. J. Exp. Psychol. Appl. 15, 307–318 (2009).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  33. Salles, A., Ais, J., Semelman, M., Sigman, M. & Calero, C. I. The metacognitive abilities of children and adults. Cogn. Dev. 40, 101–110 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Best, J. R. & Miller, P. H. A developmental perspective on executive function. Child Dev. 81, 1641–1660 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  35. Harris, P. L., Koenig, M. A., Corriveau, K. H. & Jaswal, V. K. Cognitive foundations of learning from testimony. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 69, 251–273 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  36. Tong, Y., Wang, F. & Danovitch, J. The role of epistemic and social characteristics in children’s selective trust: three meta‐analyses. Dev. Sci. 23, e12895 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  37. Koenig, M. A., Clément, F. & Harris, P. L. Trust in testimony: children’s use of true and false statements. Psychol. Sci. 15, 694–698 (2004).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  38. Gweon, H., Pelton, H., Konopka, J. A. & Schulz, L. E. Sins of omission: children selectively explore when teachers are under-informative. Cognition 132, 335–341 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  39. Corriveau, K. H. & Kurkul, K. E. ‘Why does rain fall?’: children prefer to learn from an informant who uses noncircular explanations. Child Dev. 85, 1827–1835 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  40. Danovitch, J. H. & Alzahabi, R. Children show selective trust in technological informants. J. Cogn. Dev. 14, 499–513 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Pasquini, E. S., Corriveau, K. H., Koenig, M. & Harris, P. L. Preschoolers monitor the relative accuracy of informants. Dev. Psychol. 43, 1216–1226 (2007).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  42. Hermansen, T. K., Ronfard, S., Harris, P. L., Pons, F. & Zambrana, I. M. Young children update their trust in an informant’s claim when experience tells them otherwise. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 205, 105063 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  43. Saffran, J. R., Aslin, R. N. & Newport, E. L. Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science 274, 1926–1928 (1996).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  44. Fiser, J. & Aslin, R. N. Statistical learning of new visual feature combinations by infants. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 99, 15822–15826 (2002).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  45. Xu, F. & Garcia, V. Intuitive statistics by 8-month-old infants. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 105, 5012–5015 (2008).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  46. Kidd, C., Piantadosi, S. T. & Aslin, R. N. The Goldilocks effect: human infants allocate attention to visual sequences that are neither too simple nor too complex. PLoS ONE 7, e36399 (2012).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  47. Watts, T. W., Duncan, G. J. & Quan, H. Revisiting the marshmallow test: a conceptual replication investigating links between early delay of gratification and later outcomes. Psychol. Sci. 29, 1159–1177 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  48. Kidd, C., Palmeri, H. & Aslin, R. N. Rational snacking: young children’s decision-making on the marshmallow task is moderated by beliefs about environmental reliability. Cognition 126, 109–114 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  49. Coughlin, C., Hembacher, E., Lyons, K. E. & Ghetti, S. Introspection on uncertainty and judicious help‐seeking during the preschool years. Dev. Sci. 18, 957–971 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  50. Desender, K., Boldt, A. & Yeung, N. Subjective confidence predicts information seeking in decision making. Psychol. Sci. 29, 761–778 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  51. Baranes, A. F., Oudeyer, P. Y. & Gottlieb, J. The effects of task difficulty, novelty and the size of the search space on intrinsically motivated exploration. Front. Neurosci. 8, 317 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  52. Wang, J., Yang, Y., Macias, C. & Bonawitz, E. Children with more uncertainty in their intuitive theories seek domain-relevant information. Psychol. Sci. 32, 1147–1156 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  53. Goupil, L. & Proust, J. Curiosity as a metacognitive feeling. Cognition 231, 105325 (2023).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  54. Baer, C. & Kidd, C. Learning with certainty in childhood. Trends Cogn. Sci. 26, 887–896 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  55. Bhui, R., Lai, L. & Gershman, S. J. Resource-rational decision making. Curr. Opin. Behav. Sci. 41, 15–21 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  56. Orchinik, R., Martel, C., Rand, D. G. & Bhui, R. Uncommon errors: adaptive intuitions in high-quality media environments increase susceptibility to misinformation. OSF https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/q7r58 (2023).

  57. Goupil, L. & Kouider, S. Developing a reflective mind: from core metacognition to explicit self-reflection. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 28, 403–408 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  58. Langenhoff, A. F., Engelmann, J. M. & Srinivasan, M. Children’s developing ability to adjust their beliefs reasonably in light of disagreement. Child Dev. 94, 44–59 (2023).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  59. Lapidow, E., Killeen, I. & Walker, C. M. Learning to recognize uncertainty vs. recognizing uncertainty to learn: confidence judgments and exploration decisions in preschoolers. Dev. Sci. 25, e13178 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  60. Goupil, L., Romand-Monnier, M. & Kouider, S. Infants ask for help when they know they don’t know. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 113, 3492–3496 (2016).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  61. Brink, K. A. & Wellman, H. M. Robot teachers for children? Young children trust robots depending on their perceived accuracy and agency. Dev. Psychol. 56, 1268–1277 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  62. Tong, Y., Wang, F., Danovitch, J. & Wang, W. When the internet is wrong: children’s trust in an inaccurate internet or human source. Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 40, 320–333 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  63. Stephens, E. C. & Koenig, M. A. Varieties of testimony: children’s selective learning in semantic versus episodic domains. Cognition 137, 182–188 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  64. Vanderbilt, K. E., Ochoa, K. D. & Heilbrun, J. Consider the source: children link the accuracy of text‐based sources to the accuracy of the author. Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 36, 634–651 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  65. Loftus, E. F. Reactions to blatantly contradictory information. Mem. Cogn. 7, 368–374 (1979).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  66. O’Donnell, R. & Chan, J. C. Does blatantly contradictory information reduce the misinformation effect? A registered report replication of Loftus (1979). Legal Criminol. Psychol. https://doi.org/10.1111/lcrp.12242 (2023).

  67. Altay, S., Lyons, B. A. & Modirrousta-Galian, A. Exposure to higher rates of false news erodes media trust and fuels overconfidence. Mass Commun. Soc. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2024.2382776 (2024).

  68. Smith, A. C., Woerner, J., Perera, R., Haeny, A. M. & Cox, J. M. An investigation of associations between race, ethnicity, and past experiences of discrimination with medical mistrust and COVID-19 protective strategies. J. Racial Ethn. Health Disparities 9, 1430–1442 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  69. Majee, W., Anakwe, A., Onyeaka, K. & Harvey, I. S. The past is so present: understanding COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among African American adults using qualitative data. J. Racial Ethn. Health Disparities 10, 462–474 (2023).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  70. Acerbi, A., Altay, S. & Mercier, H. Research note: fighting misinformation or fighting for information? Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-87 (2022).

  71. Danovitch, J. H., Mills, C. M., Sands, K. R. & Williams, A. J. Mind the gap: how incomplete explanations influence children’s interest and learning behaviors. Cogn. Psychol. 130, 101421 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  72. Elliott, A. C. Statistical Analysis Quick Reference Guidebook: With SPSS Examples (Sage Publications, 2007).

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank C. Jiang and J. Witkowski for their assistance with data collection, S. Piantadosi and members of the Kidd Lab for helpful discussions, and the children and families who made this research possible. This work was supported by the Walton Family Foundation (award no. 00106041, C.K.), Jacobs Foundation (award no. 048412, C.K.), John Templeton Foundation (award no. 61475, C.K.) and the Berkeley Center for New Media (C.K.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Evan Orticio, Martin Meyer & Celeste Kidd

  2. Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Martin Meyer

Authors
  1. Evan Orticio
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Martin Meyer
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Celeste Kidd
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors jointly designed the study. E.O. and M.M. collected the data. E.O. analysed the data. E.O. wrote the initial draft, and all authors edited subsequent drafts. All authors approved the final paper for publication.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Evan Orticio.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Human Behaviour thanks Paul Harris, Melissa Koenig and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplements A and B, and Supplementary Fig. 1.

Reporting Summary

Peer Review File

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Orticio, E., Meyer, M. & Kidd, C. Exposure to detectable inaccuracies makes children more diligent fact-checkers of novel claims. Nat Hum Behav 8, 2322–2329 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01992-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Version of record:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01992-8

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing