Theses and Dissertations from UMD

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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Author: search.filters.author.Levush, Karen Carmel

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    Reframing Children's Judgments of Consensus Reliability as a Process of Information Aggregation
    (2023) Levush, Karen Carmel; Butler, Lucas P; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Consensus is a compelling cue to the truth value of a given claim, but certain consensus patterns provide stronger evidence than others. This dissertation examines the developmental trajectory of children’s reasoning about the epistemic value of diverse perspectives for consensus’ reliability. One-hundred forty-four children between the ages of 7 and 9, as well as 48 adults, were introduced to a novel planet and alien groups that live there. Tasked with learning the “right things” about why various natural phenomena occur on this planet, participants were asked which one of two consensus groups, each of whom collectively thought something different, was the “better” group to ask. Participants rated their relative preference for one consensus group over another using a 6-point scale and were asked to explain their reasoning. These findings provide initial evidence that qualitative changes in children’s ability to consider how dependencies can lead to redundant information parallel the developmental shift in children’s appreciation for interpretive diversity in middle childhood.
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    Who Will Verify Their Claims?: Investigating the Influence of Group Membership on Children's Expectations About Others' Empirical Practices.
    (2018) Levush, Karen Carmel; Butler, Lucas P; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The technological landscape of today allows for almost instantaneous global circulation and retrieval of testimonial claims. Children and adults alike are increasingly faced with the task of evaluating claims’ reliability without an ability to assess the validity of the process by which that knowledge is acquired. Expectations of a standard of empirical practice may vary based on the identity of the informant and can thus guide to whom we ascribe epistemic trust. The current studies examine whether 4- to 7-year-old children extend expectations of others’ standard of empirical practice differentially to minimal group members. In both the Pilot (N=36) and Main Experiment (N=96), children were randomly assigned to one of two color groups. We tested whether children’s attributions of verification behaviors were informed by their preference for and perceived similarity to ingroup members. We found that children were just as likely to ascribe verified and unverified claims to ingroup members as they were to outgroup members. A number of possible explanations for this finding is discussed, laying groundwork for an important line of research studying the relation between children’s expectations of others’ standard of empirical practice and perceptions of trustworthiness.