Children's trust in unexpected oral versus printed suggestions: Limitations of the power of print

Children have a bias to trust spoken testimony, yet early readers have an even stronger bias to trust print. Here, we ask how enduring is the influence of printed testimony: Can the learning be applied to new scenarios? Using hybrid pictures more dominant in one animal species (e.g., squirrel) than another (e.g., rabbit), we examined 3-6-year-olds' (N=130) acceptance of an unexpected, non-dominant label suggested only orally or via print. Consistent with previous findings, early readers, but not pre-readers, accepted printed labels more frequently than when spoken. Children were then presented with identical but unlabelled hybrid exemplars and frequently applied the non-dominant labels to these. Despite early readers' prior greater acceptance of text, when oral suggestions were accepted they retained a greater influence. Findings highlight potential implications for educators regarding knowledge being applied to new scenarios: For early readers, unexpected information from text may be fragile, while a greater confidence might be placed in such information gained from spoken testimony.