CHILDRENS UNDERSTANDING OF KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION - THE TENDENCY FOR CHILDREN TO REPORT THAT THEY HAVE ALWAYS KNOWN WHAT THEY HAVE JUST LEARNED

Children's attention to knowledge-acquisition events was examined in 4 experiments in which children were taught novel facts and subsequentl y asked how they had known the new information. In Experiment 1, 4- an d 5-year-olds tended to claim they had known novel animal facts for a long time and also reported that other children would know the novel f acts. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, using facts associa ted with chemistry demonstrations. In Experiments 3 and 4, children we re taught new color words. 5-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, distingui shed between novel and familiar color words, reporting they had not kn own the novel words before the test session, but they had always known the familiar words. 4-year-olds in Experiment 4 were better able to d istinguish novel and familiar color words when the teaching of the nov el words was an explicit and salient part of the procedure.