Children's trust in print: What is the impact of late exposure to reading instruction?

Prior research in England has indicated that, unlike prereaders, young children who have learned to decode simple words view print-based information as a more authoritative source of knowledge than purely oral information. We predicted that children in Norway-who start to receive formal reading instruction at a relatively late age-would be slower to display this bias toward print-based information. Accordingly, we tested 4- to 6-year-olds (N = 96) in Norway. As expected, these children showed a delayed emergence of the bias toward print over speech. Unexpectedly, however, children who had successfully gained a basic reading ability prior to any exposure to formal reading instruction in school were no more trusting of print than were their prereading peers. These results suggest that the ability to decode simple words is an important condition for selective trust in print-based information but that exposure to formal reading instruction in school may also be necessary.