Do children interpret informants' confidence as person-specific or situational?

Children prefer to learn from confident rather than hesitant informants. However, it is unclear how children interpret confidence cues: these could be construed as strictly situational indicators of an informant's current certainty about the information they are conveying, or alternatively as person-specific indicators of how "knowledgeable" someone is across situations. In three studies, 4- and 5-year-olds (Experiment 1: N = 51, Experiment 3: N = 41) and 2- and 3-year-olds (Experiment 2: N = 80) saw informants differing in confidence.

Individual Differences in Children's Preference to Learn From a Confident Informant.

Past research has demonstrated that children can use an informant's confidence level to selectively choose from whom to learn. Yet, in any given study, not all children show a preference to learn from the most confident informant. Are individual differences in this preference stable over time and across learning situations? In two studies, we evaluated the stability of preschoolers' performance on selective learning tasks using confidence as a cue.