Investigating the Role of Racial Biases in White Children’s Testimonial Learning

Children's testimonial learning reflects a "species of reasoning" about human agents that involves different forms of trust. In this talk, I will discuss testimonial learning with an interest in how racial biases operate in White children's decisions to learn from and to trust other people. In a study with Drs. Charisse Pickron and Pearl Li, I will present work with White children from MN who evaluated Black and White informants in a series of learning and social preference tasks. Also, in a longitudinal intervention study with Drs. Gail Ferguson and Charisse Pickron, we take a qualitative look at the testimony of White mothers during a book reading task. Findings suggest that racial biases operate in White children's testimonial learning in quite specific ways and carry important implications for studies that only present White informants.