Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Abundant work has looked at children’s ability to appropri- ately reject testimonies and unverified claims (Butler et al, 2017; Frazier, Gelman, & Wellman, 2009; Koenig, Clement, & Harris, 2004). However, sometimes our current knowledge is insufficient for solving a problem. In these cases, we should reject unsatisfying facts and prefer satisfying, if speculative, conjectures. In two studies, we gave 4-7 year-old children (Study 1, N=66; Study 2, N=32) questions that either could or could not be answered with available information. For each question, children made a binary choice between a factual an- swer citing information from the story or a conjectural answer that made unverified claims. Across age groups, children suc- cessfully chose the more satisfying response regardless of its truth value: children chose facts for questions with known an- swers and conjectures for questions with unknown answers. These findings suggest that children will go beyond known in- formation to endorse unverified claims when they satisfy the question-under-discussion.