Work

We Saw It All Along

Year: 2004

Type: article

Abstract: We traced the developmental origins and trajectory of the hindsight bias. Three-, 4-, and 5-year-old children and adults identified gradually clarifying images of degraded common objects on a computer. Half the time, observers did not know in advance what the object would become. The rest of the time, observers knew the object's identity in advance and estimated when a naive same-age peer would identify the clarifying object. In two experiments, children and adults demonstrated hindsight bias by using advance knowledge to overestimate their same-age peers' ability to identify the objects. The magnitude of this bias declined across age in one experiment, but remained relatively stable over age in the other experiment. These findings link developmental psychology and adult cognitive science.

Source: Psychological Science

DOI: 10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.00663.x

Authors: Daniel M. Bernstein, Cristina Atance, Geoffrey R. Loftus, Andrew Meltzoff

Institution: University of Washington

Language: English

Topic: Child and Animal Learning Development

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Institute of Mental Health

Awards: G637160805, Memory for Visual Material