Centenario e Identidad

In order to explore the levels of performance on each question and overall scores of EM and VT tasks, the summary of responses as a function of the task is shown in Table 5.3. As it found no age differences, apart from Explicit Judgment in each task and question, the average scores across age groups are shown in Table 5.3. The statistical results of age effects

will be reported below. As the children were administered two tasks, the results of repeated measures analysis of variance tests were included in the data in order to indicate whether there were significant differences between children’s selective trust by two different linguistic expressions. In contrast to expectations, however, there were no statistically significant differences between EM and VT tasks.

Table 5.3

Mean number (SD in parentheses) of responses as a function conditions and question types

EM VT Repeated measure (language effect) Explicit Judgement (Max. = 2) 1.41 (0.72) 1.51 (0.68) F(1, 55) = 3.09, ns Ask (Max. = 3) 1.75 (0.92) 1.81 (1.03) F(1, 55) = .04, ns Endorse (Max. = 3) 1.76 (0.92) 1.86 (0.94) F(1, 55) = 1.0, ns Total (Max. = 8) 4.92 (2.12) 5.19 (2.0) F(1, 55) = .98, ns

Note. N = 59. EM: Evidential markers. VT: Verb terms. ns: non-significant.

In the first the difference between the overall scores of the tasks was analysed in order to understand children’s selective trust as a whole by a repeated measures ANOVA test with age (in months) and task order (EM or VT first) as between-subjects factors.

Chronological age was loaded in order to explore whether there was a gradual change in understanding selective trust. As the two selective trust tasks were administered, it is plausible that there was a carryover effect; thus, task order was taken into account. The results found no significant difference between the tasks, F(1, 55) = .98, p = .33, ηp2= .02, an

X order, F(1, 55) = 1.34, p = .25, ηp2= .02. There was no significant three-way interaction of

the tasks X age X order, F(1, 55) = 1.74, p = .19, ηp2= .03. There were no significant effects

of age, F(1, 55) = 2.63, p = .11, ηp2= .05, or task order, F(1, 55) = .08, p = .78, ηp2= .001, or

an interaction of age X task order, F(1, 55) = .07, p = .79, ηp2= .001.

Three further analyses were carried out to examine whether differences between each question were underestimated by the overall performance. The results on the Explicit

Judgment questions with age and task order as between-subject factors found no significant main effect of the tasks, F(1, 55) = 3.09, p = .09, ηp2= .05, an interaction of the tasks X age, F(1, 55) = 2.70, p = .11, ηp2= .05, or an interaction of the tasks X order, F(1, 55) = .10, p

= .75, ηp2= .002. No significant three-way interaction of the tasks X age X order was

observed, F(1, 55) = .22, p = .64, ηp2= .004. It was found that there was a significant effect of

age, F(1, 55) = 5.82, p = .02, ηp2= .10, indicating that the children with an increase in age

showed better judgment on the speakers’ reliability. No significant effect of task order, F(1, 55) = .36, p = .55, ηp2= .01, or an interaction task order X age, F(1, 55) = .35, p = .55, ηp2= .01, was found. The findings showed that the children’s judgment on others’ reliability

was not significantly affected by the linguistic differences.

Likewise, the results on the Ask questions did not find a significant effect of the tasks,

F(1, 55) = .04, p = .84, ηp2= .001. Neither an interaction of the tasks X age, F(1, 55) = .08, p

= .78, ηp2= .001, nor of the tasks X order, F(1, 55) = .45, p = .49, ηp2= .01 was significant.

Again, there was no significant three-way interaction of the tasks X age X order, F(1, 55) = .67, p = .42, ηp2= .01. It was found that there was a trend of effects of age, F(1, 55) = .3.78, p = .057, ηp2= .06. However, It did not find other significant effects of between-subject

factors: task order, F(1, 55) = .009, p = .93, ηp2= .000, an interaction of task order X age, F(1,

55) = .02, p = .89, ηp2= .000. Lastly, on the Endorse questions, no significant effect of the

interactions of the tasks X age, F(1, 55) = .80, p = .39, ηp2= .01, of the tasks X order, F(1, 55)

= 2.70, p = .11, ηp2= .05 or of the tasks X age X order, F(1, 55) = 3.09, p = .09, ηp2= .05 were

not significant. Again, there were no significant effects of age, F(1, 55) = .00, p = .99,

ηp2= .00, task order, F(1, 55) = .75, p = .39, ηp2= .01, or an interaction of age X task order, F(1, 55) = .65, p = .42, ηp2= .01.

Taken together, the findings seem to suggest that children’s understanding of the history of being either accurate or inaccurate was not significantly influenced by the use of the different linguistic terms. Accordingly, the different linguistic references did not make a significant difference in learning novel words tracking the past history of accuracy. It seems that the non-significant differences might be needed to reconsider regarding the distributions of the tasks. The children showed higher scores in the VT task than in the EM task. However, the distribution of the questions showed drop in performance in older children in the VT task (e.g., all above chance performance in 4-year-old children but chance performance in 6-year- old children) as presented in Table 5.5. It seems possible that this tendency might have reduced the effects of linguistic references on comparison. Thus, it would be worth exploring performance on individual tasks to understand the developmental pattern of selective trust. In the following sections, analyses on each EM and VT task were carried out by chance

performance.