Misleading children: Causal attributions for inconsistency under repeated questioning

Abstract

Children's inconsistency on many developmental tasks may reflect a misinterpretation of the experimenter's intent in communication under repeated questioning. We report the results of four studies designed to examine this issue. Since repeated questioning in the context of the standard conservation experiment may mislead children to provide nonconservation responses, children aged 4, 5, and 6 years were given forms of number and length tasks using either the standard two-question or a one-question procedure. In Experiment 1, the majority of children in all age groups conserved (i.e., responded consistently) on a one-question number task. Although the overall success rate of the 4 year olds did not exceed a chance level, there was considerable consistency across trials in the responses of those who did conserve. In Experiment 2, children were asked to give causal attributions for puppets' responses on videotaped conservation tasks. As shown by a significant puppet response × testing procedure interaction effect, children including 4 year olds chose external attributions, consisting of a desire on the puppet's part to please a grownup questioner, for nonconservation (i.e., inconsistent) responses in the standard two-question procedure. By contrast, they gave more internal attributions for conservation responses and for responses in the one-question procedure. Findings were similar in Experiments 3 and 4 on conservation of length tasks. The methodological implications of repeated questioning are discussed with due regard to the results and scope of these studies.