Consistency between verbal and non-verbal affective cues: a clue to speaker credibility.

Listeners are exposed to inconsistencies in communication; for example, when speakers' words (i.e. verbal) are discrepant with their demonstrated emotions (i.e. non-verbal). Such inconsistencies introduce ambiguity, which may render a speaker to be a less credible source of information. Two experiments examined whether children make credibility discriminations based on the consistency of speakers' affect cues. In Experiment 1, school-age children (7- to 8-year-olds) preferred to solicit information from consistent speakers (e.g. those who provided a negative statement with negative affect), over novel speakers, to a greater extent than they preferred to solicit information from inconsistent speakers (e.g. those who provided a negative statement with positive affect) over novel speakers. Preschoolers (4- to 5-year-olds) did not demonstrate this preference. Experiment 2 showed that school-age children's ratings of speakers were influenced by speakers' affect consistency when the attribute being judged was related to information acquisition (speakers' believability, "weird" speech), but not general characteristics (speakers' friendliness, likeability). Together, findings suggest that school-age children are sensitive to, and use, the congruency of affect cues to determine whether individuals are credible sources of information.

Children's use of information quality to establish speaker preferences.

Knowledge transfer is most effective when speakers provide good quality (in addition to accurate) information. Two studies investigated whether preschool- (4-5 years old) and school-age (6-7 years old) children prefer speakers who provide sufficient information over those who provide insufficient (yet accurate) information. Children were provided clues to the location of hidden dots by speakers who varied in quality and accuracy. Subsequently, children decided from whom they would like to receive additional information. In Study 1, when the outcome of the clue was clear, preschool- (n = 40) and school-age (n = 42) children chose to solicit information from sufficient rather than from insufficient speakers. In Study 2, when not provided with information about the outcome of the speakers' clues, school-age (n = 22), but not preschool-age (n = 19), children preferred sufficient relative to insufficient speakers. Results highlight a developmental progression in children's use of information quality as a cue to determining that individuals are preferable informants.