Correctness Judgments

These items evaluated how children judged the correctness of conflicting facts presented by the zookeeper informant and the maternal figure. The questions pertained to the nine conflicting facts presented by the informants (see Table 1). Participants were shown the photographs of each informant and reminded which informant told them each of these nine facts (e.g., “Jess the zookeeper said that tamanduas are gentle and purr softly but Kim the mom said they are mean and roar loudly”). Then, participants were asked a forced-choice question “Who do you think is right?” (answer options: zookeeper or maternal figure). Participants’ responses were summed across each combination of informant status and fact valence to reflect the number of times participants endorsed the zookeeper when she presented a positive fact, when she presented a negative fact, and when she presented a neutral fact; and the number of times participants endorsed the maternal figure when she presented a positive fact, when she presented a negative fact, and when she presented a neutral fact. For example, if a participant endorsed all three positive facts presented by the maternal figure, that participant would receive a “3” for the maternal-positive fact set but that would mean that the same participant endorsed zero negative facts presented by the zookeeper informant and would receive a “0” for the zookeeper-negative fact set (see Table 1). Collapsed across informant status, participants’ responses could be summed out of a possible total of six valence-specific endorsements (i.e., endorsement of positive, neutral, or negative facts). Collapsed across fact valence, participants’ responses could be summed out of a possible total of nine informant-specific endorsements (e.g., a participant who endorsed the zookeeper informant for all the conflicting facts would receive a “9” for zookeeper correctness judgments but “0” for maternal figure correctness judgments).