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Developing Concepts of Authenticity: Insights from Parents' and Children's Conversations about Historical Significance

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Title: Developing Concepts of Authenticity: Insights from Parents' and Children's Conversations about Historical Significance
Language: English
Authors: Shaylene E. Nancekivell, Sarah Stilwell, Susan A. Gelman (ORCID 0000-0003-1005-2691)
Source: Cognitive Science. 2024 48(10).
Availability: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 34
Publication Date: 2024
Sponsoring Agency: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (DHHS/NIH)
Contract Number: HD36043
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Descriptors: Parent Child Relationship, History Instruction, Concept Formation, Authentic Learning, Young Children, Children, Books, Childrens Literature, Object Permanence, Cultural Background, Self Concept, Control Groups
DOI: 10.1111/cogs.70000
ISSN: 0364-0213
1551-6709
Abstract: Abstract The present study investigated children's understanding that an object's history may increase its significance, an appreciation that underpins the concept of "historical authenticity" (i.e., the idea that an item's history determines its true identity, beyond its functional or material qualities, leading people to value real items over copies or fakes). We examined the development of historical significance through the lens of parent-child conversations, and children's performance on an authenticity assessment. The final sample was American, 79.2% monoracial White, and mid-high socio-economic status (SES) and included 48 parent-child pairs: 24 with younger children (R = 3.5 to 4.5 years) and 24 with older children (R = 5.5 to 6.5 years). Parent-child pairs discussed three books we created, with three storylines: a museum (culturally authentic) storyline, a clean-up (personally authentic) storyline, and a control storyline. Across measures, conversations suggested that authenticity may begin as a "placeholder concept" that is initially rooted in a broad appreciation for the significance of old objects and only later filled in with specifics. This placeholder initially directs children's learning about authenticity by linking, in an unspecified way, the value and significance of objects to their past. For example, we found that young children appropriately appealed to history (vs. perceptual or functional features of objects) in contexts regarding authentic objects but struggled in determining which objects were more significant on the post-test assessment, suggesting that they attend to object history but are not yet sure how histories matter for making authenticity judgments. We also found some evidence that directing children's attention toward conceptual information related to object history may in turn direct them away from material or perceptual considerations, as seen in trade-offs in parents' and children's conversations. Together, this exploratory report offers many new avenues for work on the development of authenticity concepts in childhood.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2024
Accession Number: EJ1446088
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0180503936;cgn01oct.24;2024Oct29.07:11;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0180503936-1">Developing Concepts of Authenticity: Insights From Parents' and Children's Conversations About Historical Significance </title> <p>The present study investigated children's understanding that an object's history may increase its significance, an appreciation that underpins the concept of historical authenticity (i.e., the idea that an item's history determines its true identity, beyond its functional or material qualities, leading people to value real items over copies or fakes). We examined the development of historical significance through the lens of parent–child conversations, and children's performance on an authenticity assessment. The final sample was American, 79.2% monoracial White, and mid‐high socio‐economic status (SES) and included 48 parent–child pairs: 24 with younger children (R = 3.5 to 4.5 years) and 24 with older children (R = 5.5 to 6.5 years). Parent–child pairs discussed three books we created, with three storylines: a museum (culturally authentic) storyline, a clean‐up (personally authentic) storyline, and a control storyline. Across measures, conversations suggested that authenticity may begin as a "placeholder concept" that is initially rooted in a broad appreciation for the significance of old objects and only later filled in with specifics. This placeholder initially directs children's learning about authenticity by linking, in an unspecified way, the value and significance of objects to their past. For example, we found that young children appropriately appealed to history (vs. perceptual or functional features of objects) in contexts regarding authentic objects but struggled in determining which objects were more significant on the post‐test assessment, suggesting that they attend to object history but are not yet sure how histories matter for making authenticity judgments. We also found some evidence that directing children's attention toward conceptual information related to object history may in turn direct them away from material or perceptual considerations, as seen in trade‐offs in parents' and children's conversations. Together, this exploratory report offers many new avenues for work on the development of authenticity concepts in childhood.</p> <p>Keywords: Authenticity; Conceptual development; Parent–child conversations; Object cognition</p> <p> <emph>To understand what people are and what they might become, one must understand what goes on between people and things. What things are cherished, and why, should become part of our knowledge of human beings</emph>.</p> <p>—<emph>The Meaning of Things</emph>, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Halton (1981)</p> <p>Objects play varied roles in human life. They act as tools that help humans to survive but also as symbols that fulfill social and emotional needs. For example, people cherish and find comfort in childhood toys and revere artifacts indexing important moments in history. Such objects are specifically considered to be <emph>authentic</emph>: that is, their true and most significant identity derives from their link to a particular past. They hold significance that goes beyond their visible and functional properties. For example, the meaning of someone's authentic childhood blanket is not defined by the nature of the fibers in its cloth but rather by the non‐visible traces of the adventures once shared with its owner. The ability to reason about the non‐obvious nature of authentic objects is a remarkable feat of human cognition—it requires people to look beyond the visible aspects of their environment and reason about the unseen. In this way, reasoning about authenticity is one of a range of respects in which humans think about observable experiences in non‐obvious ways, including essentialism, ownership, and the use of language to refer to abstract or not‐present entities (Gelman, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref1">13</reflink>]).</p> <p>The present study explores the development of authentic thinking in early childhood. There are many types of authenticity (Newman, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref2">38</reflink>]; Newman & Smith, [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref3">40</reflink>]). The present study adopts Newman and Smith's definition of authenticity, which moves beyond an overarching definition of authenticity as "genuine" or "true," and instead focuses on different authentic types (Newman, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref4">38</reflink>]). Specifically, the present work is concerned with the developmental ontogeny of one subtype of authenticity, <emph>historical authenticity</emph>, or the forms of authenticity (personal/cultural) that are determined by an object's historical "connection to a valued person, place, or event" (Newman, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref5">38</reflink>]). As discussed in more detail below, we operationalize this construct in terms of a focus on <emph>historical significance</emph> (see also Bloom, [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref6">4</reflink>]).</p> <p>Our exploration is informed by the proposal that certain ideas might begin as "placeholder concepts" (Carey, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref7">6</reflink>]; Medin & Ortony, [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref8">35</reflink>]; see also Simons & Keil, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref9">45</reflink>]). We propose that a placeholder concept of authenticity may direct young children's learning about object history by linking, in an unspecified way, the value and significance of objects to their past. Over time this placeholder becomes "filled in" as children learn to link specific causally relevant aspects of object history (such as historic or personal events) to specific kinds of object properties (including monetary value or display practices, such as placing a ticket stub in an album or a dinosaur bone in a museum). In other words, authenticity may begin as an abstract belief that an object's past is worth attending to, which then gets enriched with more detailed knowledge about historic events and their causal consequences. Object history has been argued to be useful for reasoning about numerous object‐related concepts. For example, an object's history determines not only its authenticity but also: who owns it, how deeply someone regards it, its identity, its function, and its monetary value, among many other properties (e.g., Bloom, [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref10">4</reflink>]; Marchak, McLaughlin, Noles, & Gelman, [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref11">33</reflink>]; Marsh et al., [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref12">34</reflink>]; Nancekivell & Friedman, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref13">37</reflink>]; Pesowski & Friedman, [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref14">42</reflink>]; Tasimi & Gelman, [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref15">47</reflink>]). As such, the proposed placeholder would provide the foundation for learning about a host of object concepts beyond authenticity.</p> <p>In support of this proposal, prior work suggests that young children are particularly attuned to the non‐obvious history of objects. For example, 2‐ and 3‐year‐olds recognize that creators' intentions dictate the identity of art and tools (Gelman & Bloom, [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref16">14</reflink>]; Preissler & Bloom, [<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref17">43</reflink>]). They also value their own objects more than others' but recognize that people who do not share the same history with these objects do not equally value them (Gelman & Davidson, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref18">16</reflink>]; Hood & Bloom, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref19">26</reflink>]). At 3 years of age, and perhaps younger, children assume the first person seen possessing an object likely owns it, possibly due to spontaneous inferences about past interactions between the object and the likely owner (Friedman & Neary, [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref20">12</reflink>]). Finally, at this age, children consider whether two actors worked together to collaboratively acquire objects (or not) when deciding how to allocate them (Hamann, Warneken, Greenberg, & Tomasello, [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref21">22</reflink>]). It is worth highlighting that in many of these cases, reliance on object history entails overriding other, more obvious cues. For example, in the ownership task described above, the owner was often less perceptually salient than the non‐owner (e.g., a person holding the possession); in resource allocation tasks, the collaborative history information competed with self‐interested motives to claim resources for oneself; and in tasks testing the link between intention and art, competing choices were equally plausible if only perceptual features, such as image shape, were taken into account.</p> <p>Despite their early sensitivity to object history, children's ability to causally link <emph>particular</emph> events in an object's history to specific types of object significance seems to evolve with age. For example, 4‐year‐olds, but not 3‐year‐olds, understand that particular past events of making, finding, and buying confer ownership but do not cause mere liking (Nancekivell & Friedman, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref22">37</reflink>]). Six‐ and 7‐year‐olds are more likely than 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds to view objects with different kinds of distinctive histories as "special" as compared to new and mundane objects (Pesowski & Friedman, [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref23">42</reflink>]). When reasoning about moral histories, 8‐ and 9‐year‐olds more consistently rejected offers of dollar bills or coins that had been stolen, even when they were willing to accept non‐stolen money from a thief, thus linking moral history to the particular tokens that had participated in that moral history (Tasimi & Gelman, [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref24">48</reflink>]).</p> <p>Similarly, children's reasoning about authenticity becomes more sophisticated with age. When deciding whether to extend a brand name to a product, 6‐year‐olds but not younger children will overlook perceptual similarity in favor of the maker's identity (Hall, Sowden, & Dharmawan, [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref25">23</reflink>]). Around this age, children consistently assign a higher monetary value to items owned by famous people than non‐famous people (Gelman, Frazier, Noles, Manczak, & Stilwell, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref26">17</reflink>]; Hartley, Fisher, & Fletcher, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref27">25</reflink>]). Finally, fourth‐grade children consider a wider range of types of histories when deciding which objects should be put into museums, as compared to preschoolers (Frazier & Gelman, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref28">10</reflink>]). Taken together, these findings support the tentative proposal that children's concepts of authenticity may begin as placeholder concepts that are then "filled in" over time once children learn which specific kinds of past events are causally relevant for reasoning about authenticity.</p> <p>We explore the present "placeholder proposal" through the lens of one study that examines parent–child conversations about authenticity and children's performance on an authenticity assessment. We include parent–child conversations because of their utility for tapping into the development of abstract concepts (Chalik & Rhodes, [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref29">8</reflink>]; Gelman, Taylor, Nguyen, Leaper, & Bigler, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref30">18</reflink>]; Jipson, Gülgöz, & Gelman, [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref31">28</reflink>]; Labotka, Gelman, & Jipson, [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref32">31</reflink>]; Nolan‐Reyes, Callanan, & Haigh, [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref33">41</reflink>]). Parent–child conversations are a context in which children feel comfortable expressing their questions and opinions and thus can be a sensitive index of young children's beliefs (e.g., Bartsch & Wellman, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref34">2</reflink>]). Further, examining how parents talk with children about abstract concepts can offer insights into what input is available to children as they construct mature concepts. Indeed, parental testimony has been shown to contribute to children's representations of a variety of non‐obvious concepts, including biological processes, mental states, and supernatural beliefs (Harris, Koenig, Corriveau, & Jaswal, [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref35">24</reflink>]). Finally, identifying any patterns of mismatches during parent and child discussions can be revealing about children's learning tendencies or biases. For example, in the present study, if parents' discussions focus on how object history is related to authenticity, but young children's discussions instead focus more on perceptual cues, then this would indicate that young children are likely biased against considering object history when thinking about authenticity.</p> <p>In the next section, we will introduce the method of the present study, but first, we must provide some additional context regarding the measurement of object authenticity. When studying authenticity, researchers rarely directly ask participants whether an item is "authentic." Avoiding such terminology is especially necessary when working with children, who are unfamiliar with terms such as "authentic" or "authenticity." Instead, adults and children are typically asked to make judgments related to the <emph>consequences</emph> of object authenticity. This might include judgments related to objects' monetary worth; their placement in cultural institutions (e.g., museum or art gallery); their personal value to owners (e.g., Gelman & Davidson, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref36">16</reflink>]); and/or what happens when they are copied (e.g., Frazier & Gelman, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref37">10</reflink>]; Gelman et al., [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref38">17</reflink>]; Hartley et al., [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref39">25</reflink>]; Hood & Bloom, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref40">26</reflink>]; Newman & Bloom, [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref41">39</reflink>]). In such studies, researchers rely on comparison cases to make conclusions about authenticity. Namely, they might compare people's thinking about authentic objects to similar but mundane objects. For example, they might ask children to judge the monetary worth of a mundane versus an authentic object (e.g., Gelman et al., [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref42">17</reflink>]; Hartley et al., [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref43">25</reflink>]), or which of two objects—authentic versus mundane—belongs in a museum or art gallery (Frazier & Gelman, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref44">10</reflink>]). Instead of relying on labels like "authentic" or "mundane," researchers manipulate factors between objects that are relevant to deciding if the authentic object is authentic or not, and then measure participants' sensitivity to these factors via appropriate measures. For example, they might describe the authentic object as owned by a prominent historical figure and a mundane object as owned by an everyday person. The goal, then, is to see whether the information provided (e.g., contact with historical figures) influences people's judgments (e.g., about monetary value). To make their conclusions, researchers then rely on <emph>the comparison</emph> embedded in the study. Such a design allows researchers to tap into the causal processes (e.g., historical event) that lead an object to be viewed as authentic and thus be judged differently on the selected scales. Although one approach could be to compare authentic objects to one that is fake or inauthentic (e.g., Hood & Bloom, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref45">26</reflink>]), that is not always or even typically the approach that is taken. Theoretical work suggests that different processes may contribute to thinking about authenticity and inauthenticity (Silver, Newman, & Small, [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref46">46</reflink>]). For example, when thinking about authenticity, people appear to be focused on the assignment of value or meaning, whereas when thinking about inauthenticity they appear to be more focused on moral evaluations (Silver et al., [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref47">46</reflink>]). For this first examination of parent–child conversations about authentic objects, we have chosen to focus exclusively on authenticity rather than to introduce judgments about inauthenticity.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-2">The present study</hd> <p>The present study is the first of its kind to look at parent–child conversations about historical authenticity and thus is exploratory in nature. We have chosen to operationalize this construct in terms of <emph>historical significance</emph> (i.e., whether an object's history increases its significance or value). Although historical significance is foundational to a concept of authenticity (Frazier, Gelman, Wilson, & Hood, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref48">11</reflink>]), there are other dimensions and instantiations of authenticity that significance per se does not capture (Carroll & Kovács, [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref49">7</reflink>]). For example, as outlined above, an appreciation of historical significance need not imply an understanding of the distinction between authentic and inauthentic or fake items. We return to this point in the Discussion.</p> <p>The general aim was to explore parent–child conversations about historical significance to shed light on how authenticity concepts develop in childhood. As this is the first study of its kind, no elements of the study were pre‐registered. Notably, even though the present study is exploratory, it was still shaped by the proposed theoretical framework regarding object history and its importance to authenticity, as well as related developmental trends reported in the literature. This framework directed which themes we examined in our data, such as historical talk vis‐à‐vis material talk. It also shaped expectations of how talk may differ across contexts and ages, including expectations about age‐related increases in authenticity judgments.</p> <p>Building on extant literature, we presented the parent–child dyads that participated in this study with carefully crafted books to stimulate their conversations about two different forms of historical authenticity: cultural and personal. Similar to prior work in this field, each page of the books included a contrast between an authentic object and an object without any special authentic ties—with the exception of our control books (see below). We refer to the latter as "mundane" objects. We focused on children 3.5 to 6.5 years, as children's authentic reasoning on experimental tasks improves throughout this period (e.g., Gelman et al., [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref50">17</reflink>]; Hall et al., [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref51">23</reflink>]).</p> <p>Each book presented one of three storylines, focused on cultural authenticity, personal authenticity, or no authenticity. The <emph>cultural authenticity</emph> storyline presented object histories with cultural significance (e.g., being "the first" of its kind, being owned by a historically significant figure, or participating in a famous event). This storyline and related post‐book assessment were in the familiar setting of a museum (as in Frazier & Gelman, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref52">10</reflink>]). The <emph>personal authenticity</emph> storyline presented object histories with personal significance to the owner (e.g., being owned in childhood or involved in a memorable or special occasion). This storyline and related post‐book assessment were in the familiar setting of cleaning‐up, in which a person needs to decide which personal items to keep or throw out. The third, and final storyline, about a garage sale, did not contain any history information and served as a context to capture baseline talk about objects.</p> <p>In reporting the book reading phase, we first examined parents' and children's <emph>explicit</emph> endorsements of objects that they thought should or should not be placed in a museum (cultural authenticity), saved during clean‐up (personal authenticity), or purchased at a garage sale (control). We expected that, compatible with age‐related growth in children's authenticity concepts, older children would outperform younger children on the explicit choices involving authenticity.</p> <p>We also coded parents' and children's talk for: history references, general references to "oldness," and material features of objects. This allowed us to explore key <emph>implicit</emph> themes that children and parents express when considering authentic (vs. non‐authentic) objects. Of special interest was how they talked about observable object features (i.e., material features), compared to talk about unobservable history, across storylines. Note that our authentic storylines embodied this contrast: The mundane objects were labeled in the books as "new" (thus communicating that they are functional, clean, and unblemished, and thus possessing positive material features) as contrasted to the authentic objects, which were described with relevant cultural or personal history. Further, a number of the authentic objects were visibly old and worn (e.g., the very first Dr. Seuss book had a tattered cover; Abraham Lincoln's top hat was scuffed and discolored), such that the value derived from authenticity competed with the value derived from material qualities. Finally, references to an item as "old" were also of interest as they indicate that an object has a history but do not require knowledge of the value or source of that history. Furthermore, one may glean "oldness" from an object's appearance, thus presenting a framing of object history that does not compete with the object's superficial features. In this sense, "old" may serve as a placeholder for children's initial representations of history.</p> <p>Across storylines, we expected more history‐based talk for the authentic storylines about the museum and cleaning‐up than for the control storyline about the garage sale. In contrast, we expected more material talk for the garage sale storyline. Notably, as compared to the more explicit choice measure, we expected that this implicit measure may be better suited to detecting young children's sensitivity to history (even if it is not fully mature), as we expected that children at both ages would be drawn to discussing history, especially if it was highlighted for them in conversation. However, compatible with the proposal that authenticity may initially be a "placeholder" concept, we also predicted that younger children might engage in less talk about history, and more talk about only oldness and material concerns, as compared to older children.</p> <p>After the book reading phase, children participated in two related authenticity assessments that assessed their ability to identify previously unseen <emph>cultural</emph> and <emph>personally authentic</emph> objects that were not in the book reading task. In parallel with our predictions of older children having more mature concepts of authenticity, we predicted that, with age, children would better identify authentic objects. We also explored the potential relations between children's authenticity judgments and their talk during the book reading phase, with the expectation that talk about history but not material features would be related to better performance (controlling for age). We end by exploring some relations between parent and child reasoning.</p> <p>On both the parent–child book reading task and the authenticity assessments, we did not ask participants to figure out which items were authentic in the absence of information about their past—a task that can be quite difficult even for adults. Rather, we explicitly provided information about the objects' history, in order to examine how this information would be used. This is analogous to many such situations in people's daily lives, when they are assessing the significance of objects with known history or provenance (e.g., when visiting a museum or deciding what to do with family heirlooms or other personal items).</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-3">Method</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0180503936-4">Participants</hd> <p>The final sample included 48 parent–child pairs recruited from the area surrounding Ann Arbor, MI. Twenty‐four parent–child pairs included younger children aged 3.5 to 4.5 years, and 24 pairs included older children aged 5.5 to 6.5 years. A sample size of 24 per cell was predetermined before testing. No formal power analyses were conducted before beginning the study. Four additional children were tested and excluded for experimental error (<emph>n</emph> = 2) and discovery that they were out of the designated age range after testing (<emph>n</emph> = 2). Due to unforeseen circumstances (running out of time and a fire alarm), two of the children in the final sample did not complete the authenticity assessment, so analyses relevant to the authenticity assessment include data from 46 children. Demographic information for the final sample (<emph>N</emph> = 48) is provided in Table 1. Consent and assent protocols were followed and this project was reviewed by the University of Michigan Institutional Review Board (HUM00020553).</p> <p>1 Table Demographic information of final sample</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead><tr><th align="left">Demographic</th><th align="center">%</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Child Gender</td><td /></tr><tr><td>Girls</td><td>47.92</td></tr><tr><td>Boys</td><td>52.08</td></tr><tr><td>Child Racial Identities</td><td /></tr><tr><td>Black/African American</td><td>4.20</td></tr><tr><td>Multiracial</td><td>14.70</td></tr><tr><td>White</td><td>79.20</td></tr><tr><td>Unknown</td><td>2.10</td></tr><tr><td>Mother Education Level</td><td /></tr><tr><td>Some college</td><td>12.50</td></tr><tr><td>College degree</td><td>43.75</td></tr><tr><td>Post college education</td><td>41.67</td></tr><tr><td>Other</td><td>2.08</td></tr><tr><td>Father Education Level</td><td /></tr><tr><td>Technical school</td><td>2.08</td></tr><tr><td>Some college</td><td>6.25</td></tr><tr><td>College degree</td><td>45.83</td></tr><tr><td>Post‐college education</td><td>39.58</td></tr><tr><td>Unknown</td><td>6.25</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <hd id="AN0180503936-5">Materials and procedure</hd> <p>Participants were tested in a quiet laboratory space at the University. The testing session consisted of two phases: a book reading phase where parent–child discussions about authenticity were captured and an authenticity assessment where children were asked to make judgments about the authenticity of different objects.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-6">Book reading phase</hd> <p>During the book reading task, parent–child pairs looked through and discussed three storylines: "Welcome to the Museum!" (regarding cultural authenticity), "Clean‐Up Time at Home!" (regarding personal authenticity), and "Let's Go to a Garage Sale!" (regarding objects with no special history). Within each storyline, pairs considered a series of object pairs, for which they were asked to make a choice. More details about the structure of each storyline can be found below.</p> <p>The protagonist in each storyline was gender‐matched to the child's gender.[<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref53">1</reflink>] Our Open Science Framework (OSF) project contains examples for the boy participants (see https://osf.io/x2d3e/?view%5fonly=45ce05ca5c2744f0bb6d600534146998). All three storylines followed the same general structure. They began with three open‐ended warm‐up questions about the activity (visiting a museum, cleaning up things at home, or attending a garage sale), along with a picture of the context. A note reminded the parent, "You may help your child as much as you wish!" Next, the parent–child pair was introduced to a protagonist who had to make decisions about which things belong in a museum (museum storyline), which things to keep (clean‐up storyline), or which things to buy (garage sale). Then each storyline included one warm‐up trial with an obvious correct choice (e.g., for the museum storyline, a piece of chicken, or a dinosaur bone).[<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref54">2</reflink>] Finally, pairs were asked to reflect on a series of five focal object pairings, one pair per page. At the end of each story, the pairs were asked open‐ended questions about three objects, the last of which focused on the replaceability of objects (i.e., their fungibility).</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-7">Book counterbalancing</hd> <p>The museum (cultural authenticity) and clean‐up (personal authenticity) storylines always appeared as the first two storylines, in counterbalanced order, with the garage sale (control) storyline last. Across participants, every focal item pair appeared in all three books (e.g., teddy bears appeared equally in the museum, clean‐up, and garage sale books), but because of the within‐subjects design, each participant saw an item pair in just one book. The following system was used to counterbalance the five focal item pairings across participants. First, three sets of items were created: A, B, and C. Set A included: teddy bears, storylines, paintings, hats, and rings. Set B included: toy trains, bicycles, dresses, shoes, and teacups. Set C included: baseballs, watches, neckties, sand/sand art, and violins. Each participant saw all three sets of objects, but we counterbalanced which set appeared in which storyline. For example, for one participant, Set A appeared in the museum storyline, Set B appeared in the clean‐up storyline, and Set C appeared in the garage sale storyline, whereas for another participant Set B appeared in the museum storyline, Set C appeared in the clean‐up storyline, and Set A appeared in the garage sale storyline. This counterbalancing allowed us to ensure that each set of items appeared equally across the three storylines. Participants were pseudorandomly assigned to their counterbalanced order using a list of all possible combinations. Wherever possible, the same images were used for the corresponding items across storylines (e.g., the same two pictures of violins were used for all three books, although any given child would see those pictures in only one of the three books). The items in the museum books differed more from the other books, given constraints on the appearance of these items. Thirteen of the images in these books were unique to the museum context and corresponded to the relevant descriptions (e.g., an image of the Mona Lisa). Altogether, 86% or 77 of the 90 focal images across books and orders were shared among the storylines (3 books × 15 pages × 2 focal images per page).</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-8">Museum storyline (cultural authenticity): "Welcome to the Museum!"</hd> <p>This storyline was designed to elicit talk about the cultural significance of objects. In the story, children were told that the protagonist (Jesse [boy]/Jessie [girl]) was visiting a museum and had to decide which objects belonged in the museum. The warm‐up questions about the context were as follows: "Have you ever been to a museum? What are some museums that you have visited? What is inside a museum?" The easy warm‐up trial contrasted a dinosaur bone with a piece of chicken (drumstick). Children were next shown five focal object pairings, with the key conversational prompt of: "Which one of these [insert object name] should Jesse [Jessie] pick for the museum? Why?" Each object with cultural significance was contrasted with a new variant. This was done to communicate that the mundane objects did not have prior history. Additionally, describing them as "new" implied positive material features (functional, clean, and unblemished). For example in this storyline, there were two hats, one labeled as "Abraham Lincoln's Top Hat" and the other as "New Hat." See Table 2 for history descriptions. The final open‐ended questions for this storyline were as follows. Two questions asked why the protagonist might select for the museum each of two different objects (a pen, a statue) for which no descriptions were provided. The final question asked whether the protagonist should replace an object with cultural significance (the very first football) with another object without such history (another football). In both cases, these provided opportunities for participants to spontaneously generate talk about (unstated) history.</p> <p>2 Table Object histories for the items in the clean‐up and museum storylines. Each participant saw only one of the three object sets (A, B, C) (see counterbalancing information)</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead><tr><th align="left">Items</th><th align="center">Museum Storyline (Cultural Authenticity)</th><th align="center">Clean‐Up Storyline (Personal Authenticity)</th><th align="center">Mundane Items (Both Storylines)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Set A</td></tr><tr><td>Teddy bear</td><td>Very first teddy bear</td><td>Teddy bear Aaron slept with when he was a baby</td><td>New bear/teddy bear</td></tr><tr><td>Book</td><td>Very first Dr. Seuss book</td><td>First book Aaron ever read</td><td>New book</td></tr><tr><td>Art</td><td>Da Vinci's Mona Lisa</td><td>Painting Aaron's mother made when she was a little girl</td><td>New poster</td></tr><tr><td>Hat</td><td>Abraham Lincoln's top hat</td><td>Aaron's Grandpa's top hat</td><td>New hat</td></tr><tr><td>Ring</td><td>Ancient Egyptian scarab ring</td><td>Aaron's grandmother's ring</td><td>New ring</td></tr><tr><td>Set B</td></tr><tr><td>Toy train</td><td>Very first toy train</td><td>Aaron's dad's toy train from when he was young</td><td>New toy train</td></tr><tr><td>Bicycle</td><td>Very first bicycle</td><td>Bicycle Aaron's grandfather learned to ride</td><td>New bicycle</td></tr><tr><td>Dress</td><td>Dress worn by Queen of England</td><td>Aaron's mom's wedding dress</td><td>New dress</td></tr><tr><td>Shoe</td><td>Ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz</td><td>Aaron's first pair of baby shoes</td><td>New shoes</td></tr><tr><td>Teacup</td><td>Teacup from the Titanic</td><td>Aaron's grandma's teacup</td><td>New teacup</td></tr><tr><td>Set C</td></tr><tr><td>Baseball</td><td>Babe Ruth's baseball</td><td>Baseball Aaron got at his first baseball game</td><td>New baseball</td></tr><tr><td>Watch</td><td>Very first pocket watch</td><td>Watch that Aaron's dad had when he was young</td><td>New watch</td></tr><tr><td>Necktie</td><td>Martin Luther King, Jr.'s necktie</td><td>Aaron's great‐grandfather's necktie</td><td>New necktie</td></tr><tr><td>Sand</td><td>Sand from the moon</td><td>Sand from Aaron's fun vacation</td><td>Sand art</td></tr><tr><td>Violin</td><td>Stradivarius violin from 1727</td><td>Aaron's mom's violin from when she was young</td><td>New violin</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <hd id="AN0180503936-9">Clean‐up storyline (personal authenticity): "Clean‐Up Time at Home!"</hd> <p>This storyline was designed to elicit talk about the personal significance of possessions. In this story, children were told that the protagonist (Aaron or Erin) is going to clean up their house, and they were asked if they could help the protagonist decide which things to keep. The warm‐up questions about the context were as follows: "Have you ever helped clean up your house? What things do you throw out or give away? What things do you keep?" The easy warm‐up trial contrasted a new toy car with a dirty old toy car. Next were the five focal object pairings, which were shown with the key conversation prompt: "Which one of these [insert object name] should Aaron [Erin] keep? Why?" For these pairings, one of the objects was always described as new and the other was always given a personal history related to the protagonist or a close family member. See Table 2 for the personal history descriptions. The final open‐ended questions for this storyline were as follows. Two explained that the protagonist decided to keep an item (a scarf, a teacup), and the dyad was asked to guess why the protagonist decided to keep it. No information about either item was provided, beyond a photo. For the final question, the storyline explained that an object with personal history was missing (the protagonist's brother's karate belt) and asked what the protagonist should do, and whether they should replace it with another object without such history (another belt).</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-10">Garage sale storyline: "Let's go to a Garage Sale!"</hd> <p>In this story, children were told about a garage sale and asked which item the protagonist (Alex) should purchase. This control story was designed to elicit talk about object preferences when no indications of history were provided. As noted earlier, the images were identical to those in the clean‐up storyline and overlapped with those in the museum storyline (identical for all the new items and for two of the authentic items). There were again warm‐up questions about the context ("Have you ever been to a garage sale? What do they have there? What do you like to buy at a garage sale?") and an easy warm‐up trial (contrasting a dirty sock and a roller skate). There were again five focal object pairings. The objects in each pair were always perceptually different from one another but of the same kind (e.g., both bicycles), but unlike the other stories, no information was provided about their history. For this storyline, the pairings were shown with the following prompt: "Which one of these [insert object name] should Alex buy? Why?" Similar to the other two storylines, at the end of the story, children were asked three open‐ended questions, including why the protagonist bought each of two items (a bucket, a card game), and whether to replace crayons that went missing with a new set.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-11">Authenticity assessment</hd> <p>After the book reading phase, children participated in an authenticity assessment regarding the cultural authenticity/museum task and personal authenticity/clean‐up task. They were tested by a researcher without parental input. One block tested children's understanding of the personal significance of objects by asking them to judge which of two objects the protagonist should keep when cleaning up at their house. The expected (target) choice was always the object with a significant personal history. The other block tested children's understanding of the cultural significance of objects by asking them to judge which of two objects the protagonist should pick for the museum. The expected (target) choice was the object with a significant cultural history. Both blocks included four trials (i.e., four object pairings). The order of the blocks was counterbalanced. Table 3 includes the test pairings in each block. These pairings were distinct from, but similar to, the items in the books and were identical for all children (varying only in the protagonist's gender to match that of the books). At the end of the assessment, children were asked to reflect on the exploratory question: "Out of all the things that you own, which one is the most special to you? Why?" Due to space limitations, we do not discuss children's answers to this question. Trials were counterbalanced as was the side of the screen the target item with a unique history appeared on.</p> <p>3 Table Test pairings from the authenticity assessment</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead><tr><th align="left">Block</th><th align="center">Target Item</th><th align="center">Other Item</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Museum (Culturally Authentic)</td></tr><tr><td>Trial 1</td><td>Very first American penny</td><td>New penny</td></tr><tr><td>Trial 2</td><td>President Obama's flag pin</td><td>New flag pin</td></tr><tr><td>Trial 3</td><td>Harry Potter's glasses</td><td>New glasses</td></tr><tr><td>Trial 4</td><td>Very first postage stamp</td><td>New postage stamp</td></tr><tr><td>Clean‐up (Personally Authentic)</td></tr><tr><td>Trial 1</td><td>Aaron's blanky from when he was a baby</td><td>New blanket</td></tr><tr><td>Trial 2</td><td>Lunchbox Aaron's Mom used when she was young</td><td>New lunchbox</td></tr><tr><td>Trial 3</td><td>Spoon from Aaron's vacation to Disneyland</td><td>New spoon</td></tr><tr><td>Trial 4</td><td>Stuffed animal dog Aaron's brother gave him when he was a baby</td><td>New stuffed animal dog</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <hd id="AN0180503936-12">Book reading phase: Transcription and coding</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0180503936-13">Transcribing</hd> <p>To analyze the parent–child conversations from the book reading phase, trained research assistants transcribed parent–child conversations and divided their talk into codable units of speech (i.e., utterances). Utterances were identified using intonational contour and timing and included any continuous unit of conversation that was uninterrupted by another speaker and did not include a full stop or new subject noun phrase. Extensive written guidelines were provided to research assistants to ensure consistency in these judgments (e.g., they were instructed to combine filler words such as "OK," "yeah," or "um" with adjacent speech segments into a single utterance unless there was a substantial pause or they occurred immediately before a new sentence; see Reece et al., [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref55">44</reflink>], for discussion of the complexities of turn‐taking in natural conversation). Utterances could include full sentences, as well as phrases or even single words (Gelman et al., [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref56">18</reflink>]; Gelman, Chesnick, & Waxman, [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref57">15</reflink>]). A secondary transcriber checked all transcripts for accuracy. Any talk involving direct reading of the story by the parent was marked as such and not further coded.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-14">Choice coding</hd> <p>On each page in the authentic storylines, parents and children were presented with a choice between two objects, one of which they could select to be placed in the museum or saved during clean‐up. To determine their choices, trained research assistants coded the transcripts for endorsements and non‐endorsements of the authentic and mundane objects during these choices. Specifically, they coded how parents and children responded to the question of which object should be put into the museum (cultural authenticity) or kept during clean‐up (personal authenticity). Each response was coded in one of four ways: selection of the authentic object (e.g., "And send that one to the museum <emph>[points to famous train]</emph>"), selection of the mundane object (e.g., "Um a new toy train. ..."), rejection of the authentic object (e.g., "I know she's gonna not keep this one <emph>[points to personal teddy bear]</emph>"), or rejection of the mundane object (e.g., "because it's not food" <emph>[an explanation of why the dinosaur bone over the chicken bone should be selected]</emph>). Two scores were computed: authentic choices (sum of selection of authentic plus rejection of mundane) and mundane choices (sum of selection of mundane plus rejection of authentic).</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-15">Content coding</hd> <p>Two trained research assistants also coded the content of parent–child conversations. Disagreements were resolved through discussions. Kappas for each category are reported inline and were generated using all utterances from parents and children. Codes were non‐mutually exclusive in that a single utterance in a conversation could receive more than one code. These codes were chosen to capture talk regarding material properties and non‐material or non‐perceptually obvious properties (see History and Old). The "old" code indexed references to history that were unspecified.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-16">On‐topic content (κ = .98)</hd> <p>Coders first identified whether each utterance was on‐ or off‐topic. Off‐topic utterances included a speech that was procedural commentary, unrelated to the book, or unintelligible. All other utterances were considered on‐topic and were then coded further.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-17">History (κ > .87)</hd> <p>The history code indexed utterances about historical events or historical references relevant to the object's identity, including personal history. To make coding easier, this code was initially coded as six codes: very first, rare, celebrity association, personal association, past events, object history, and old, and then later summed. Examples include: "because it is a dress from the Queen of England," "Because it was Erin's grandfather's top hat that he gave to her," and "...the Titanic was a really big ship that sank."</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-18">Old (κ = .99)</hd> <p>The old category indexed utterances about how the object was from the past or from a long time ago. Examples include: "because it's old from years and years ago," "'Cause it kinda looks old," and "it's old‐fashioned." This category was included within the History composite (above), but also indexed separately, to permit separate analyses, because it represents less specific reasoning about history than the other history codes.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-19">Material (κ > .96)</hd> <p>The material code indexed utterances about the perceptual, functional, or aesthetic features of the object, including its likeability. To make coding easier, this code was initially coded as four codes (newness, superficiality, functionality, and superficial preferences) and then later combined. Examples include: "'cause it's more shinier," "and this one's got gold on the top," "I love stuffed animals," and "it's cool."</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-20">Results</hd> <p>Main data files and analytic code used to write this paper can be found in our OSF repository: https://osf.io/x2d3e/?view%5fonly=27fdf510f2b64c948347c2e0ac42746e. Models are provided in line as written in lmer.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-21">Book reading phase: Book choice analysis</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0180503936-22">Scoring</hd> <p>Each child and parent received an authenticity score, by subtracting the number of mundane choices from the number of authentic object choices (see Coding section 2.3.2, above, for details). Positive scores represent net authentic endorsement; negative scores represent net mundane endorsement. Scores for the garage sale storyline were yoked to what would be an authentic object selection in the clean‐up storyline, as the pictures were identical across these two storylines.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-23">Analytic plan</hd> <p>Mixed linear regressions were built in R version 4.2.1 using the lme4 (Bates et al., [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref58">3</reflink>]) package. Regressions included a categorical predictor of storyline (museum, clean‐up, garage sale), categorical predictor of child age (young, old), and random effects modeled as (1|id). Variables were contrast coded. All regressions here and elsewhere treat age categorically because it was sampled categorically. As a reminder, the age ranges were: young (3.5–4.5 years) and old (5.5–6.5 years). Regressions were run separately for children and parents. The output from an omnibus ANOVA was reported (lmerTest package, Kuznetsova, Brockhoff, & Christensen, [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref59">30</reflink>]). Simple effects were computed using the emmeans package (Lenth, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref60">32</reflink>]) and Tukey‐corrected for multiple comparisons. Degrees of freedom for all analyses use Kenward–Roger approximation. For all analyses, effect sizes are reported as eta‐squared values.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-24">Predictions</hd> <p>We predicted positive scores for the authentic storylines (clean‐up and museum) and chance or negative scores for the garage sale storyline.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-25">Analyses</hd> <p>Fig. 1 shows children's and parents' responses. Children's difference scores ranged from −8 to 11 (<emph>M(SD)</emph> = 0.62 (4.31)), and parents' ranged from −2 to 3 (<emph>M(SD)</emph> = 0.28 (0.74)). Data for children and parents were modeled as: child_choice←lmer(score ∼ storyline*Age_g + (1|SubjNum), data = ch_choice) and parent_choice←lmer(score ∼ storyline*Age_g + (1|SubjNum), data = par_choice). For children, the storyline predicted their authentic object selections, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref61">2</reflink>, 92) = 24.87, <emph>MSE</emph> = 340.58, <emph>p</emph> < .001, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.35, but age did not, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref62">1</reflink>, 46) = 2.21, <emph>MSE</emph> = 30.25, <emph>p</emph> = .14, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.05. Child age also did not interact with storyline, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref63">2</reflink>, 92) = 1.92, <emph>MSE</emph> = 26.33, <emph>p</emph> = .15, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.04. Simple effects analysis revealed that children selected more authentic objects in the museum storyline than either the garage sale storyline or the clean‐up storyline, <emph>p</emph>s < .001. They selected authentic objects equally often in the clean‐up and garage sale scenarios (<emph>p</emph> = .14).</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CGN/01oct24/cogs70000-fig-0001.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cogs70000-fig-0001.jpg" title="1 Authenticity choice scores as a function of speaker (child, parent), storyline (museum, clean‐up, garage sale), and child age group (young, old), with positive scores representing endorsement of authentic objects and negative scores representing endorsement of mundane objects. For figure clarity, the y‐axis for child and parent graphs have different minimum and maximum values. Error bars are standard error bars computed by ggplot2." /> </p> <p></p> <p>For parents, the storyline also predicted their authentic object selections, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref64">2</reflink>, 92) = 6.28, <emph>MSE</emph> = 3.17, <emph>p</emph> = .0028, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.12, whereas child age did not, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref65">1</reflink>, 46) = 0.34, <emph>MSE</emph> = 0.17, <emph>p</emph> = .56, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.00, nor did child age interact with storyline, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref66">2</reflink>, 92) = 3.07, <emph>MSE</emph> = 1.55, <emph>p</emph> = .051, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.06. Simple effects analysis revealed that parents' talk had a different pattern from children. Parents selected the authentic choices more often for both the museum storyline and the clean‐up storyline as compared to the control garage sale storyline (<emph>p</emph>s = .0025 and .043, respectively). Choices in the museum storyline were not different from the clean‐up storyline (<emph>p</emph> = .58).</p> <p>Follow‐up one‐sample <emph>t</emph> tests for both parents and children next tested when their scores differed meaningfully from zero. For children, museum scores were significantly above zero (<emph>t</emph>(<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref67">47</reflink>) = 5.90, <emph>p</emph> < .001), clean‐up scores were significantly below zero (<emph>t</emph>(<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref68">47</reflink>) = −3.01, <emph>p</emph> = .0042), and garage sale scores were no different from zero (<emph>t</emph>(<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref69">47</reflink>) = −.26, <emph>p</emph> = .79). For parents, museum scores were significantly above zero (<emph>t</emph>(<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref70">47</reflink>) = 4.07, <emph>p</emph> < .001), clean‐up scores were also significantly above zero (<emph>t</emph>(<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref71">47</reflink>) = 3.37, <emph>p</emph> = .0015), and garage sale scores were no different from zero (<emph>t</emph>(<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref72">47</reflink>) = 0, <emph>p</emph> = 1.00). In sum, children preferred the authentic objects in the museum storyline, whereas parents preferred the authentic objects in <emph>both</emph> the museum and the clean‐up storylines.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-27">Book reading phase: Content analysis</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0180503936-28">Scoring</hd> <p>For each storyline, children and parents were given three scores: history, old, and material scores (see Table 4). We created these scores by dividing each speaker's talk in each category for a given storyline (summing across all pages, including discussion prompted by the open‐ended questions presented at the end of the story) with that speaker's on‐topic talk for that same storyline. This procedure yielded scores indicating the relative frequency with which each code appeared (e.g., a score of .20 would indicate that a code appeared once for every five on‐topic utterances in a given storyline).</p> <p>4 Table Descriptives of raw frequencies of different types of talk as a function of speaker (child vs. parent) and storyline (museum, clean‐up, garage sale)</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead><tr><th align="left">Talk Type</th><th align="center">Child <italic>M (SD)</italic></th><th align="center">Parent <italic>M (SD)</italic></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>On‐topic</td><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>Museum</td><td>35.2(15.2)</td><td>53.4(27.3)</td></tr><tr><td>Clean‐up</td><td>33.8(12.3)</td><td>43.0(18.2)</td></tr><tr><td>Garage sale</td><td>35.8(17.3)</td><td>42.8(24.8)</td></tr><tr><td>History</td><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>Museum</td><td>7.6(6.8)</td><td>15.8(13.1)</td></tr><tr><td>Clean‐up</td><td>4.4(3.6)</td><td>7.2(6.6)</td></tr><tr><td>Garage sale</td><td>1.5(2.4)</td><td>1.9(3.8)</td></tr><tr><td>Old</td><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>Museum</td><td>3.8(3.5)</td><td>5.6(4.0)</td></tr><tr><td>Clean‐up</td><td>1.5(2.3)</td><td>1.9(2.4)</td></tr><tr><td>Garage sale</td><td>1.1(1.9)</td><td>1.4(2.2)</td></tr><tr><td>Material</td><td /><td /></tr><tr><td>Museum</td><td>8.0(6.0)</td><td>9.1(5.0)</td></tr><tr><td>Clean‐up</td><td>13.1(7.6)</td><td>12.4(6.9)</td></tr><tr><td>Garage sale</td><td>15.8(6.8)</td><td>14.9(8.8)</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <hd id="AN0180503936-29">Analytic plan</hd> <p>All regressions were run separately for children and parents. Mixed linear regressions were built in R version 4.2.1 using the lme4 (Bates et al., [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref73">3</reflink>]) package for each score (old, history, material). All mixed linear regressions included a categorical predictor of storyline (museum, clean‐up, garage sale), categorical predictor of age (young, old), and random effects modeled as (1|id). Variables were contrast coded. The output from an omnibus ANOVA was reported (lmerTest package, Kuznetsova et al., [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref74">30</reflink>]). Simple effects were computed using the emmeans package and Tukey‐corrected for multiple comparisons.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-30">Predictions</hd> <p>We predicted more history talk and less material talk for the two storylines involving authenticity: museum (cultural authenticity) and clean‐up (personal authenticity). The reverse pattern was expected for the garage sale storyline. We predicted that although all ages would show sensitivity to the storyline, older children would use history more often than younger children, and younger children would use material features and "old" more often than older children.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-31">History</hd> <p>We begin by examining how parents and children spoke about history (see Fig. 2). Here are two examples:</p> <p> <emph>Example 1</emph>.</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> CHILD: Everybody would like to see moon sand.</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: This [mundane] is kinda artistic. That might be kinda interesting to look at too don't you think?</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: No this one's [authentic] from the moon.</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: That one's [authentic] from the moon that makes it more special to you huh?</item> </ulist> <p> <emph>Example 2</emph>.</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> PARENT: Which one do you think?</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: [points to personal (authentic) necktie].</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: You would keep the old one? Why?</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: 'Cause it's a memory.</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: 'Cause it's a memory.</item> </ulist> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CGN/01oct24/cogs70000-fig-0002.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cogs70000-fig-0002.jpg" title="2 Mean relative frequencies of history talk per utterance presented by speaker (child, parent), storyline (museum, clean‐up, garage sale), and age group (young, old). Error bars are standard error bars computed by ggplot2." /> </p> <p></p> <p>Data for parents and children were modeled as: c_hist←lmer(score ∼ storyline2*age_g + (1|id), data = hpc_l) and p_hist←lmer(score ∼ storyline2*age_g + (1|id), data = hppar_l). For children, storyline (<emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref75">2</reflink>, 92) = 30.02, <emph>MSE</emph> = 0.37, <emph>p</emph> < .001, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.39) and a storyline by age interaction (<emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref76">2</reflink>, 92) = 3.51, <emph>MSE</emph> = 0.043, <emph>p</emph> = .034, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.07) predicted the relative frequency at which they discussed history. Young children provided more frequent talk about history during the museum storyline than the control garage sale storyline (<emph>p</emph> = .0057), but equivalent frequencies of history talk during the clean‐up and garage sale storylines (<emph>p</emph> = .054), and during the clean‐up and museum storylines (<emph>p</emph> = .97). In contrast, older children provided different relative frequencies of history talk across all storylines, <emph>p</emph>s ≤ .0089, with highest rates for the museum storyline and lowest for the garage sale storyline.</p> <p>For parents, the storyline predicted the relative frequencies of history talk, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref77">2</reflink>, 92) = 97.84, <emph>MSE</emph> = 0.74, <emph>p</emph> < .001, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.68, but there was no main effect of child age or interaction, <emph>p</emph>s > .16. Parents provided different relative frequencies of talk across all storylines, <emph>p</emph>s < .001, with highest rates for the museum storyline and lowest for the garage sale storyline.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-33">Old</hd> <p>The "old" code overlapped with the History code above, but we analyzed it separately because it indexed the past without reference to a particular event, owner, or context, and thus potentially could serve as a more accessible "placeholder" concept for young children. See Fig. 3 for the data and two examples below:</p> <p> <emph>Example 1</emph>.</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> PARENT: Which one of these neckties should Jessie pick for the museum and why? This is um [points to famous tie]—this tie belongs to this guy [points to Martin Luther King, Jr.]. That's Martin Luther King Jr. Or a brand‐new necktie [points to new tie].</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: That one [points to famous tie].</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: Yeah okay why do you think peo—why do you think that should be in the museum?</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: Older.</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: Okay.</item> </ulist> <p> <emph>Example 2</emph>.</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> CHILD: 'Cause it's not old I think? [referring to personal teacup].</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: Actually that's the old one.</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: Um 'cause it's old.</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: He should keep it 'cause it's old?</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: Mmhm [meaning yes].</item> </ulist> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CGN/01oct24/cogs70000-fig-0003.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cogs70000-fig-0003.jpg" title="3 Mean rates of old talk per utterance presented by speaker (child, parent), storyline (museum, clean‐up, garage sale), and child age group (young, old). Error bars are standard error bars computed by ggplot2." /> </p> <p></p> <p>For children and parents, data were modeled as: c_old←lmer(score ∼ storyline2*age_g + (1|id), data = opc_l) and p_old←lmer(score ∼ storyline2*age_g + (1|id), data = oppar_l). For children, only the storyline influenced their relative frequencies of old talk, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref78">2</reflink>, 92) = 23.65, <emph>MSE</emph> = 0.098, <emph>p</emph> < .001, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.34. They provided more frequent talk about "old" when discussing the museum storyline than either the garage sale (<emph>p</emph> < .001) or clean‐up storylines (<emph>p</emph> < .001) but equivalent rates for the clean‐up and garage sale storylines (<emph>p</emph> = .34).</p> <p>For parents, both storyline (<emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref79">2</reflink>, 92) = 34.81, <emph>MSE</emph> = 0.12, <emph>p</emph> < .001, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.43) and child age (<emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref80">1</reflink>, 46) = 4.42, <emph>MSE</emph> = 0.02, <emph>p</emph> = .041, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.09) predicted the relative frequencies at which they talked about oldness. Parents provided more old talk when speaking to younger than older children and higher rates when discussing the museum storyline than either the garage sale (<emph>p</emph> < .001) or clean‐up storylines (<emph>p</emph> < .001). They provided equivalent rates of old talk for the clean‐up and garage sale storylines (<emph>p</emph> = .53).</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-35">Material</hd> <p>Finally, we examined the relative frequencies of talk about material considerations (see Fig. 4). Here are two examples:</p> <p> <emph>Example 1</emph>.</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> PARENT: This is—this was Aaron's grandmother's teacup [referring to personal teacup]. And this is a new teacup [referring to new teacup]. You think he should keep Aaron's grandmother's teacup [referring to personal teacup].</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: I want it—I want him to keep it [referring to personal teacup].</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: I think that one's kind of prettier [referring to personal teacup].</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: Mmhm [meaning yes] 'Cause it has pink.</item> </ulist> <p> <emph>Example 2</emph>.</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> CHILD: It must be very old.</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: Yeah but–</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: And losing fur already.</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: It looks new. But what one do you think she should keep? The new one–</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: This one because it's more fuzzy (points to new teddy bear).</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: Yeah?</item> </ulist> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CGN/01oct24/cogs70000-fig-0004.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cogs70000-fig-0004.jpg" title="4 Mean relative frequencies of material talk per utterance presented by speaker (child, parent), storyline (museum, clean‐up, garage sale), and child age group (young, old). Error bars are standard error bars computed by ggplot2." /> </p> <p></p> <p>For children and parents data were modeled as: c_mat←lmer(score ∼ storyline2*age_g + (1|id), data = mpc_l) and p_mat←lmer(score ∼ storyline2*age_g + (1|id), data = mppar_l). For children, a storyline (<emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref81">2</reflink>, 92) = 37.27, <emph>MSE</emph> = 0.62, <emph>p</emph> < .001, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.45) and a storyline by age interaction (<emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref82">2</reflink>, 92) = 3.84, <emph>MSE</emph> = 0.06, <emph>p</emph> = .025, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.08) predicted the relative frequencies at which they discussed materiality. Young children provided more material talk during the garage sale storyline than the museum storyline (<emph>p</emph> = .0013) and during the clean‐up storyline than the museum storyline (<emph>p</emph> = .023). There was no difference between the clean‐up and garage sale storylines (<emph>p</emph> = .95). In contrast, older children provided different relative frequencies of material talk across all storylines, <emph>p</emph>s ≤ .013, with the highest for the garage sale storyline and the lowest for the museum storyline.</p> <p>For parents, the storyline predicted the relative frequency at which they talked about material features, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref83">2</reflink>, 92) = 23.90, <emph>MSE</emph> = 0.35 <emph>p</emph> < .001, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.34. Child age was found to have a non‐significant trend, which was not interpreted further, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref84">1</reflink>, 46) = 4.04, <emph>MSE</emph> = 0.059, <emph>p</emph> = .050, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.08. Parents provided different relative frequencies of material talk across all storylines, <emph>p</emph>s ≤ .027, with the highest for the garage sale storyline and the lowest for the museum storyline.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-37">Book content shifts</hd> <p>While coding the book reading phase, we noticed a potential relation between the relative frequency of parents' history talk and children's use of "old" talk: When children discussed oldness, parents at times responded by invoking history—thereby both <emph>affirming</emph> that oldness mattered (by using "old" terms themselves) and <emph>expanding</emph> on the child's statement (by referencing particular events) as illustrated in the first example below.</p> <p> <emph>Example 1</emph>.</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> CHILD: [points to Lincoln's hat]</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: Why would you pick that one?</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: 'Cause it—you can tell it's old and dusty. That means it's really old.</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: And do you know who Abraham Lincoln was? He was one of the presidents of the United States. Hmm, so do you think there is another reason you would pick Abraham Lincoln's top hat?</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: Oh, 'cause he was way in the past.</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: Right. And he was a very important man.</item> </ulist> <p> <emph>Example 2</emph>.</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> PARENT: Okay, which one of these dresses should Jessie pick for the museum and why? This is a new dress [points to new dress]. Dress worn by Queen of England [famous dress].</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: [points to famous dress]</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: The Queen of England one why?</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: Because it's more fancier. And they might like it. And it's old.</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: It's old.</item> </ulist> <p> <emph>Example 3</emph>.</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> CHILD: That one looks old [points to personal bicycle].</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: Does it?</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: Mmhm.</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: Okay this is a new bicycle. This is a bicycle Erin's grandfather learned to ride.</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: She should keep that bike [referring to personal bicycle].</item> </ulist> <p>We tested the correlation between the relative frequencies of children's "old" usage and parents' "history" usage. We also tested to see if this correlation was selective, by testing for the reverse correlation between parents' usage of "old" and children's "history" usage, and for a correlation between the relative frequencies of children's "old" usage and parents' references to material features. We did not predict that these other correlations would be significant.</p> <p>For the museum storyline about cultural authenticity, child rate of oldness talk was moderately correlated with parental rate of history talk, <emph>r</emph> = .35, <emph>p</emph> = .016, but the reverse correlation (parent oldness, child history) was not significant, <emph>r</emph> = .21, <emph>p</emph> = .15. Similarly, children's old talk did not significantly correlate with parents' material talk, <emph>r</emph> = −.22, <emph>p</emph> = .13. For the clean‐up storyline, we found the same patterns: Child old talk moderately correlated with parent history talk, <emph>r</emph> = .31, <emph>p</emph> = .036; parent old talk was not significantly correlated with child history talk, <emph>r</emph> = .072, <emph>p</emph> = .63; and child old talk was not significantly correlated with parent material talk, <emph>r</emph> = .17, <emph>p</emph> = .25.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-38">Book reading content summary</hd> <p>To summarize the findings reported above: Older and younger children performed comparably on the explicit choice measures but—unlike parents—selected the authentic object more for the museum than the clean‐up storyline. Moreover, children selected the authentic choice above 0 for the museum but not the clean‐up storyline. This suggests that in their explicit judgments, children did not show sensitivity to the authenticity of the personal authentic objects (clean‐up storyline). However, in their spontaneous conversations, children (at both ages) and parents provided more history‐based talk during the two authentic storylines than during the control storyline about the garage sale. Conversely, they engaged in more material talk during the garage sale storyline than the other (authentic) storylines, suggesting that materiality per se may be deemed less relevant for authentic items. Unexpectedly, we found few differences between younger and older children. The one exception was during the museum storyline, where younger children provided lower rates of history talk than older children. Nonetheless, the younger children still distinguished the museum and the garage sale storylines, demonstrating some sensitivity to the authenticity of the objects.</p> <p>We also discovered a potential relation between parents' history talk and children's use of oldness, in that children's placeholder "old" language was related to parents' history language. Parents provided relevant historical details, thus filling in an abstract placeholder notion with more precision, at times explaining why and how the past is important for reasoning about authentic concepts.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-39">Authenticity assessment</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0180503936-40">Analytic plan and scoring</hd> <p>After the parent–child book reading session, children participated in two researcher‐conducted tasks, museum and clean‐up, which assessed their understanding of authenticity. For each task, children were given a score ranging from 0 to 4 that represented the number of times they correctly selected the authentic object.</p> <p>Using the same packages as above, mixed linear regressions were conducted for each assessment, with the child age group (young, old) and task type (museum, clean‐up) as predictors. Follow‐up regressions examined these tasks separately using simple linear regressions with only age as a predictor. We also used Pearson's partial correlations, controlling for exact age, to examine the relation between children's talk during the book reading phase and their performance on each task.</p> <p>We predicted that older children would outperform younger children. We further predicted that talk about history, but not materiality, would be related to children's performance on the authenticity tasks. For the omnibus data were modeled as: post_mod←lmer(score ∼ test_type*age_g + (1|SubjNum), data = post1a). For each individual post test data were modeled as: post_m←lm(ChildPOSTTESTMuseum ∼ age_g, data = post1) and post_clean←lm(ChildPOSTTESTCleanup ∼ age_g, data = post1).</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-41">Analyses</hd> <p>Omnibus regressions revealed that task type, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref85">1</reflink>, 44) = 4.15, <emph>MSE</emph> = 5.09, <emph>p</emph> = .048, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.09, and age group, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref86">1</reflink>, 44) = 19.51, <emph>MSE</emph> = 23.9, <emph>p</emph> < .001, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.31, predicted children's responses but that these factors did not interact, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref87">1</reflink>, 44) = 3.38, <emph>MSE</emph> = 4.15, <emph>p</emph> = .073, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.07. Children did better on the museum assessment than the clean‐up assessment, and older children outperformed younger children. Follow‐up regressions revealed that older children outperformed younger children on both the museum task, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref88">1</reflink>, 44) = 20.79, <emph>MSE</emph> = 33.2, <emph>p</emph> < .001, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.32, and the clean‐up task, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref89">1</reflink>, 44) = 5.38, <emph>MSE</emph> = 8.30, <emph>p</emph> = .025, <emph>η</emph><sups>2</sups> = 0.11. Follow‐up comparisons against chance (score of 2) using one‐sample <emph>t</emph> tests revealed that older children's museum post‐test judgments were above chance, <emph>t</emph>(<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref90">23</reflink>) = 6.33, <emph>p</emph> < .001, but their clean‐up post‐test judgments were not different from chance, <emph>t</emph>(<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref91">23</reflink>) = 1.54, <emph>p</emph> = .14. In contrast, both younger children's museum choices, <emph>t</emph>(<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref92">21</reflink>) = −1.28 <emph>p</emph> = .22, and their clean‐up choices were no different from chance, <emph>t</emph>(<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref93">21</reflink>) = −1.74 <emph>p</emph> = .096. Fig. 5 shows these patterns.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CGN/01oct24/cogs70000-fig-0005.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cogs70000-fig-0005.jpg" title="5 Children's authenticity assessment performance by task (museum, clean‐up) and child age group (young, old). Error bars are standard error bars computed by ggplot2." /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0180503936-43">Correlations</hd> <p>Controlling for age, children's talk about history during the museum storyline was moderately correlated with their performance on the museum authenticity task, <emph>r</emph> = .37, <emph>p</emph> = .013. Controlling for age, children's talk about material features during the museum storyline was moderately negatively correlated with their performance on the museum authenticity task, <emph>r</emph> = −.32, <emph>p</emph> = .033. There was no significant correlation between children's relative frequencies of talk about general oldness during this storyline and their performance on the museum authenticity task, <emph>r</emph> = .20, <emph>p</emph> = .19. For the clean‐up task, there was a non‐significant negative correlation between children's talk about oldness and task performance, <emph>r</emph> = −.29, <emph>p</emph> = .050. Other correlations between children's clean‐up task performance and their references to history and material considerations were also non‐significant, <emph>p</emph>s ≥ .13.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-44">Authenticity task summary</hd> <p>In parallel with our predictions of older children having more mature concepts of authenticity, older children were better able to identify authentic objects. As predicted, we discovered a relation between children's authenticity judgments and the relative amount of their talk about history—but for the museum task only. No relations were found between children's authenticity judgments and their discussions of oldness or material features. Furthermore, the predicted relations were not found between children's history talk and their performance on the personal authenticity task. Significant correlations did not occur for all kinds of talk and tasks, suggesting that a general factor such as language skill or utterance complexity is unlikely to be driving these effects (e.g., it is unlikely that children who provided more information per utterance performed better on the authenticity assessment).</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-45">Relations among parents' and children's reasoning</hd> <p>In a final set of analyses, we tested to see if the relative frequency of parents' usage of history, old, and material talk was related to children's performance on the two authenticity tasks. We predicted that only history‐based talk would be predictive of their performance. Controlling for child age, children's performance on the museum authenticity assessment task was moderately correlated with parental history talk, <emph>r</emph> = .34, <emph>p</emph> = .022, but not their material talk, <emph>r</emph> = −.23, <emph>p</emph> = .13, or "old" talk, <emph>r</emph> = .053, <emph>p</emph> = .73. Controlling for age, we found no relations between the relative frequency of parents' references to history, material, or oldness, and children's clean‐up assessment task scores, <emph>p</emph>s ≥ .085.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-46">Discussion</hd> <p>Authentic objects are important both for what they reveal about the value of unseen properties for human cognition and for the consequences they hold for daily life—both at the level of individuals (which items we hold onto or pay more for, our sense of self, etc.) and at the level of society (e.g., which items we place in museums, which groups we belong to, proper conduct of ritual practices, etc.). The present study provides an exploratory look at how young children (3.5–4.5 and 5.5–6.5 years of age) and parents talk and reason about two different kinds of <emph>historical</emph> authenticity: cultural authenticity and personal authenticity. Cultural authenticity motivates the selection of special objects for museums based on their ties to significant historical origins, individuals, or events. Personal authenticity motivates saving and interacting with special objects based on their ties to significant personal individuals or events. We operationalized historical authenticity by focusing on judgments of historical significance: when an object's history is deemed relevant, beyond its functional or material qualities. The present work is novel in its focus on parent–child conversations of authenticity in the context of a book reading task. These conversations provide insights into what themes children express, how parents convey authenticity to their young children, and developmental changes within an important developmental timespan. We next discuss our findings and their implications in turn.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-47">Young children's talk and understanding</hd> <p>Across measures, we detected an appreciation for authenticity in the younger age group. During the book reading task, young children's choices and talk showed sensitivity to the cultural authenticity context (museum) as compared to the control context (garage sale; in which items had no identified history). For example, when choosing what belonged in a museum, they preferred authentic objects, and they talked about history more in the cultural (museum) context than the control context. Young children's sensitivity to authenticity during the choice phase of the book reading task is especially impressive, given that a preference for the authentic items entailed favoring authentic items over those that were materially and functionally better, as they were described as "new" and were visibly newer. Nonetheless, despite displaying these abilities, young children's reasoning was far from adult‐like. For example, young children's scores on the post‐book reading assessment did not differ from chance and numerically tended toward the selection of the new items over the authentic items.</p> <p>During the storylines where children spoke the most about history, we saw comparatively less talk about material features. We suggest this pattern may be evidence that consideration of history shifts attention away from material features, suggesting a qualitatively different way of reasoning about authentic versus mundane objects. All the items (including the authentic objects) had material features that could be discussed, and indeed the material features of the items in the museum books were arguably even more salient than those in the other books, given the greater contrast between old and new for those pairs. Thus, the decrease in talk about material features did not seem to reflect anything about the physical nature of the items but rather their historical significance. Similar trade‐offs can be found elsewhere in the cognitive development literature. For example, in one study, researchers studying the effects of explanations on young children's learning found that when children's memory for non‐perceptual/deeper features of objects improved, their memory for superficial features became impaired (Walker et al., [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref94">49</reflink>]). Thus, we suspect that the trade‐off pattern we detected represents an important feature of early learning—one that facilitates the development of non‐obvious abstract concepts by prioritizing non‐obvious properties over perceptually salient information when learning.</p> <p>With age, children improved on some measures. For example, the two age groups showed qualitatively different patterns of performance on the post‐test assessment: Whereas the older children preferred authentic items overall, the younger children showed no preference. Moreover, in the book reading task, only the older children both talked more about history and less about materiality in the context focused on personal authenticity (the clean‐up storyline) and also talked more about history in the clean‐up storyline versus the neutral, control context (the garage sale storyline).</p> <p>We interpret these age‐related patterns as supporting the idea that children's concept of historical authenticity begins as an abstract placeholder. Namely, although young children are sensitive and attend to history in their conversations, they are also, perhaps, not yet sure how histories <emph>matter</emph> for making authenticity judgments and so they struggle on the post‐test assessment. In further support of this notion, we found that children's more holistic talk about historical events or individuals, as opposed to solely talk about oldness, was a predictor at an individual level of their performance on the post‐assessment. In this way, we propose that what is developing is an awareness of the <emph>particular</emph> histories that lead objects to gain authentic values. This view of development is compatible with prior work arguing that some concepts undergo an abstract‐to‐concrete shift during childhood (e.g., Simons & Keil, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref95">45</reflink>]), in contrast to classic theories assuming the reverse, that is, a concrete‐to‐abstract developmental trajectory in which concepts are grounded in concrete perceptual and sensory experiences and emerge only gradually following a period of more concrete, surface‐level understandings (e.g., Inhelder & Piaget, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref96">27</reflink>]). Namely, we propose that children first possess an abstract framework (i.e., that the past matters) and then fill in this framework over time with details to support and exemplify this framework (i.e., particular, causally relevant historical events of significance). The initial framework is abstract in that it is unspecified and does not appear to be focused on, or emerge out of, perceptually salient or material factors.</p> <p>It is also important to note that a grasp of historical significance falls short of an understanding that authentic items differ from inauthentic fakes. We tentatively suggest that sensitivity to historical significance may be a developmental precursor to an understanding of fakes. Indeed, an understanding of fakes may be especially challenging for young children, given their difficulties with false beliefs on theory‐of‐mind tasks (Wellman, [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref97">50</reflink>]), as well as their difficulties incorporating intent in their moral judgments (Cushman, Sheketoff, Wharton, & Carey, [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref98">9</reflink>]). Namely, identifying inauthentic object often requires complex moral evaluations that must include inferences about intent of the creator (see Silver et al., [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref99">46</reflink>] for discussion). How (and when) children understand fakes remains an important question for future research.</p> <p>We believe it would be fruitful for future work to tap into young children's burgeoning understanding of authenticity by developing new experimental measures that build on the present findings. For example, one set of experimental studies could aim to explore the detected material/history trade‐offs by examining older children's memory for features of authentic objects to see if historical information is not only privileged in their talk but also in how they encode information for long‐term storage. In other tasks, experimenters could examine children's responsiveness to authentic information by examining the effects of a more precisely controlled training task on their behavior. For example, such a task might directly teach children about a specific historical figure and their importance to society, and/or the importance of an object that a family purchased on a trip. Such a study would allow us to see at what time point children make use of relevant causal‐historical information in their judgments. Any non‐responsiveness to training could be informative about how cognitive changes might be limiting children's thinking in this domain (e.g., developmental changes in children's theory of mind; Wellman, [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref100">50</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-48">Children's thinking about personal versus cultural authenticity</hd> <p>As discussed above, across measures we unexpectedly found that children were less sensitive to the link between history and personal authenticity than between history and cultural authenticity. For example, on the post‐test personal authenticity assessment (clean‐up), children's responses at both ages hovered around chance, and during the book reading, younger children's talk and choices did not distinguish between the control garage sale context and the personal history context. Furthermore, although older children's conversations did differ based on these contexts, the personal authenticity context elicited lower rates of such talk than the cultural (museum) context. This pattern may seem surprising, given that one could have predicted that children would be more aware of personal history, as they have arguably had much more experience with it. For example, prior work shows that many children form attachments to their own blankets or soft toys and prefer their old toys over new toys (Gelman & Davidson, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref101">16</reflink>]; Gjersoe, Hall, & Hood, [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref102">20</reflink>]; Hood & Bloom, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref103">26</reflink>]). In contrast, learning about cultural value would seem to require more cultural input as it relies on understanding the relevance of <emph>particular</emph> historical persons or events.</p> <p>So, why did children perform worse in the personal authenticity context (i.e. clean‐up storyline)? Before we explore this question, it is worth noting that the patterns we found are unlikely to be due to problems with the items, as parents showed the predicted sensitivity to personal authenticity during the book reading task.</p> <p>One possibility is that children were picking up on the fact that the museum items were considerably older than the clean‐up items (e.g., the Mona Lisa is much older than a painting made by a parent)—so if their understanding of authenticity is rooted in a placeholder notion of "old," the museum items may provide a stronger signal. Relatedly, it could also be that children think of museums as repositories for old things and conversely that old things (e.g., "antiques") have special value simply by virtue of being old. In future work, it would be useful to consider other words or concepts that might serve as authenticity placeholders during conversations with children—for example, perhaps "special" would better index the proposed placeholder in personally authentic contexts.</p> <p>Another possibility for the difference between the two storylines is that the histories in these tasks relate to third‐party individuals (i.e., they are not personally relevant to the participants). It may be that when personal authenticity does not involve the child's own items, it requires perspective‐taking, which is difficult for young children (Kampis, Lukowski Duplessy, Askitis, & Southgate, [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref104">29</reflink>]). For example, even though children recognize the value of their own beloved objects, they may have difficulty appreciating the value of a used item that belongs to someone else and choosing the item that the character in the book would wish to save. It does not have special significance for the participants, so they may be more drawn to the brand‐new object. Indeed, when attempting to explain personal authenticity to a child who selected the mundane item, parents sometimes took the strategy of shifting perspective for the child, by asking them to consider what they would do if it were their own. For example, after one child said that the character in the book should keep the new teddy bear rather than the one the character slept with when she was a baby, the parent said, "Which one would <emph>you</emph> keep? Would <emph>you</emph> keep <emph>your</emph> old friend? Or the brand new one?" [emphases added]. (The child answered, "Brand new one.") Related to this issue, there is work suggesting that older children could have benefitted from "shifting strategies" as they find it easier to think about multiple competing perspectives, which in this case would be their own and the owners' (Moll, Meltzoff, Merzsch, & Tomasello, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref105">36</reflink>]). Future work might explore how children at different ages benefit from different kinds of pedagogical strategies aimed at teaching young children about object authenticity.</p> <p>Alternatively, it could also be that items with personal history evoke more mixed feelings, at any age. For example, perhaps children—like adults—experience ambivalence between wanting to keep personal mementos and wanting to get rid of "old junk." Children's responses may also reflect a realistic assessment that their attachments can wane over time. A toy that was beloved when they were a baby may no longer hold significance to them, now that they are "big."</p> <p>Related to the present questions, an important direction for future work will be to clarify the nature of developmental mechanisms and how they converge (or diverge) across types of authentic reasoning. In the present paper, we propose that developing an understanding of authenticity begins with a placeholder concept, which then is filled‐in with semantic knowledge via relevant experiences within the target domain of authentic thinking. To help better understand how this knowledge is acquired and in what contexts, future work might investigate how experiences (e.g., with cultural institutions such as museums) may influence authenticity judgments in the case of cultural authenticity. We were unable to examine this issue in our sample, as the vast majority of children who answered the question of whether they had ever visited a museum said "yes" (82%). However, it is notable that regardless of whether they reported having visited a museum, children were also asked what is inside of a museum, and 87% mentioned something old (e.g., dinosaurs, bones, fossils, or "old things").</p> <p>It is also likely that there are several cognitive mechanisms that influence children's ability to understand authenticity, and that these diverge across types of authenticity. For example, as just speculated, it seems likely that theory‐of‐mind abilities are related to children's ability to recognize others' personally authentic objects, but that they are less important for thinking about culturally authentic objects. Another relevant ability might be episodic memory, which develops during this age period (for a review, see Ghetti & Lee, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref106">21</reflink>]). We tentatively suggest that changes in semantic knowledge provide support to underwrite the relevance of "old" items, by specifying what causes X to be authentic in Y domain. It is also possible that episodic memories could support children's identification of what kinds of causal information matter. A fruitful direction for future work will be to directly test the contribution of different mechanisms to authentic thinking by seeing how cognitive tasks (e.g., theory of mind, episodic memory) and general knowledge assessments correlate with children's authenticity judgments.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-49">Parental talk and its relation to children's reasoning</hd> <p>Parental talk with young children was also sensitive to the authentic versus control contexts. Parents discussed history more in the personal and cultural authenticity contexts than the control context, and discussed material properties of objects more in the control context than the personal and cultural authenticity contexts. This was true for parents of children at both age groups. Like children, parents stressed authenticity more for cultural than personal items, although unlike the children, both authenticity contexts differed from the control. A notable finding was that parents were more likely to discuss items as "old" when talking to younger children. Here is one example of such a conversation where, toward the end of the conversation, the parent even directly commented how the child was "catching on" to the old references:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> PARENT: Why would she want that for the museum?</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: Because it's old.</item> <p></p> <item> PARENT: [laughs] There you go now you're catching on. 'Cause it's old and interesting?</item> <p></p> <item> CHILD: Yeah.</item> </ulist> <p>We hypothesize that this might reflect an intuitive belief that categorizing an object as old would be an effective means of introducing authenticity to a young child who otherwise does not have an extensive knowledge base regarding historical figures and events. In other words, discussion of an item as old not only communicates that it has substantial history, but also may signal that its value is to be found in its past (not just in its physical or functional features), and that something regarding its past may make it somehow special. At the same time, talk of items as "old" may pose obstacles to children's understanding of authenticity, given that often old items lose their value (they become less attractive and less functional). For this reason, it may be that other concepts (e.g., "antique") may jointly indicate "old and valuable," and thus serve as a more effective authenticity placeholder.</p> <p>We also examined how parental talk related to certain child measures. Parental talk about history positively correlated with children's performance on the museum authenticity post‐book task (assessing cultural authenticity), but parental talk about "oldness" or material features did not relate to children's performance on that task. No significant correlations were found for the clean‐up authenticity post‐book task (assessing personal authenticity). As above, significant correlations were selective in that they did not occur for all kinds of talk and task performance. This again suggests that a low‐level factor such as utterance complexity is unlikely to be driving effects (i.e., it is unlikely that parents who provided more codeable talk per utterance had children who performed better). Altogether, we interpret these findings as suggesting that consideration of historical persons or events may be required to appreciate the value of history at this age. Future work should build on these findings by examining different factors that might influence the quality of parent–child talk. For example, it could be that richer talk is elucidated if children and parents are considering real objects (vs. pictures), as some work suggests that children (and adults) will actually search for traces of object history on physical objects (Gelman, Manczak, Was, & Noles, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref107">19</reflink>]). It will also be important for future work to examine less structured and more naturalistic talk (see discussion below), perhaps that occurs in museums (e.g., Callanan et al., [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref108">5</reflink>]), as well as how such conversations correlate with children's understanding on post‐tests. Examining longer interactions would give opportunities for more detailed coding, such as the coding of parent pedagogical strategies (e.g., see Attisano, Nancekivell, Tran, & Denison, [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref109">1</reflink>]) and their relation to children's understanding.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-50">Methodological limitations and considerations</hd> <p>We conducted our investigation through the lens of semi‐structured parent–child conversations about authenticity and children's performance on an authenticity assessment (without their parents present). On the one hand, because we recorded and coded conversations about the books we designed, we were able to collect data from young children beyond simply their choices as per traditional experimental work. We were also able to test children in a context in which they felt comfortable expressing their questions and opinions. Indeed, parents and young children spoke quite a bit about the focal pairings in the books we designed.</p> <p>However, our choices involved a number of trade‐offs that should be made clear. First, because the study was the first of its kind, it is highly exploratory in nature. It was also not pre‐registered, and so any discussion of our findings should be taken in this exploratory light. Further, although we have a typical sample for this kind of open‐ended data, our sample was small (<emph>N</emph> = 24 per cell), and homogenous (i.e., high‐SES, monoracial White children). Further work will be needed to test the generalizability of any of our findings.</p> <p>Second, because of its semi‐structured nature, our study does not tell us to what degree parents and children will spontaneously talk about authenticity in an unstructured or unscripted task. Now that we have a better understanding of how children behave during a set of structured conversations, future work should consider examining parent–child conversations on a less structured task and how it relates to post‐test performance.</p> <p>Second, it is likely that parents influenced children's endorsements and talk during the book reading task. We view children's performance as not necessarily representative of children's thinking about authenticity in isolation but rather their receptiveness to information about authenticity provided by others.</p> <p>Third and relatedly, the post‐test measure of children's authentic thinking is likely not a "pure" measure of authentic thinking but rather some combination of children's conceptualization of authenticity and what they learned from their parents during the book reading phase directly prior. Although we view this issue as more of a strength than a drawback, as it allows us to explore the potential relations among parental talk, children's receptiveness to this talk, and child performance, it would be worthwhile for future work to assess authenticity judgments on a different day of testing to reduce transfer effects or to have a pretest/post‐test design that can more directly measure change over the course of the interaction.</p> <p>Fourth, because our study included conversations with parents, children may have learned more during the book reading phase than they would have with other conversational partners. For example, it would be interesting to learn what children would incorporate from siblings or peers. For example, children might not perform as well on the post‐test in a peer case, if they had lower trust in that input.</p> <p>Finally, our findings are limited by the fact that we cannot ask children directly about what is authentic. For example, in our study, as per prior work, we had to ask children about the consequences of authenticity. It could be that children would perform differently on a direct categorization task if it were provided. For example, it could be that our museum task requires additional understanding, such as what a museum is. Future work might try to address this issue by asking children about multiple consequences of authenticity (i.e., monetary worth, effects of copying items) to see how their judgments do (or do not) converge. Similarly, future work might broaden the types of authenticity/inauthenticity considered (see Newman, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref110">38</reflink>]; Newman & Smith, [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref111">40</reflink>]), to understand the continuity of patterns, we discovered across types of authenticity.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-51">Conclusion</hd> <p>Across measures, young children's conversations with their parents reflected the proposal that children's initial concept of historical authenticity might begin as a placeholder notion that the past confers special value to objects. This idea was reflected in their conversations about oldness as well as the contrast between their conversations (revealing sensitivity to the authentic statuses of the objects) and their performance on the post‐test (which did not exceed chance). Older children showed more consistent sophistication in their thinking about authentic objects, often talking about history with their parents and performing well on the museum post‐test measures. We found that parents were supporting young children's emerging concepts by highlighting the ways history mattered. Finally, we found interesting asymmetries between performance on personally authentic and culturally authentic objects, asymmetries that will be fruitful grounds for future work. Together, the present study offers a number of novel insights into young children's developing concepts of authenticity and highlights the utility of child‐friendly book reading tasks for measuring children's developing conceptual representations.</p> <hd id="AN0180503936-52">Acknowledgments</hd> <p>We would like to thank the families who supported this work as well as funding from NICHD grant #HD‐36043.</p> <ref id="AN0180503936-53"> <title> Footnotes </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref53" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> One child received the other gender's story on error.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref34" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> On the warm‐up trials, children performed extremely well, selecting the correct choice 88% of the time (88%, 83%, and 92% for museum, clean‐up, and garage, respectively), selecting the incorrect choice only 3% of the time (6%, 0%, and 2%, respectively), and selecting both choices only 10% of the time (6%, 17%, and 6%, respectively). By contrast, parents rarely guided children's responses, with 94% providing no choice (96%, 96%, and 90%, respectively) and only 6% providing the correct choice (4%, 4%, and 10%, respectively). (No parent provided the incorrect choice.) These data indicate that these young children possessed a clear sense, without parental guidance, of what is appropriate for placing a museum, for keeping during home clean‐up, and for purchasing at a garage sale. The data also indicate that the warm‐up trials rarely provided parental instruction, guidance, or feedback. Altogether, these data suggest that children at both ages understood the broader context of all three storylines.</bibtext> </blist> </ref> <ref id="AN0180503936-54"> <title> References </title> <blist> <bibtext> Attisano, E., Nancekivell, S. E., Tran, S., & Denison, S. (2022). " So, what is it?" Examining parent‐child interactions with artifacts in a museum. 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Items – Name: Title
  Label: Title
  Group: Ti
  Data: Developing Concepts of Authenticity: Insights from Parents' and Children's Conversations about Historical Significance
– Name: Language
  Label: Language
  Group: Lang
  Data: English
– Name: Author
  Label: Authors
  Group: Au
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Shaylene+E%2E+Nancekivell%22">Shaylene E. Nancekivell</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Sarah+Stilwell%22">Sarah Stilwell</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Susan+A%2E+Gelman%22">Susan A. Gelman</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1005-2691">0000-0003-1005-2691</externalLink>)
– Name: TitleSource
  Label: Source
  Group: Src
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Cognitive+Science%22"><i>Cognitive Science</i></searchLink>. 2024 48(10).
– Name: Avail
  Label: Availability
  Group: Avail
  Data: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
– Name: PeerReviewed
  Label: Peer Reviewed
  Group: SrcInfo
  Data: Y
– Name: Pages
  Label: Page Count
  Group: Src
  Data: 34
– Name: DatePubCY
  Label: Publication Date
  Group: Date
  Data: 2024
– Name: SourceSuprt
  Label: Sponsoring Agency
  Group: SrcSuprt
  Data: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (DHHS/NIH)
– Name: NumberContract
  Label: Contract Number
  Group: NumCntrct
  Data: HD36043
– Name: TypeDocument
  Label: Document Type
  Group: TypDoc
  Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Research
– Name: Subject
  Label: Descriptors
  Group: Su
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Parent+Child+Relationship%22">Parent Child Relationship</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22History+Instruction%22">History Instruction</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Concept+Formation%22">Concept Formation</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Authentic+Learning%22">Authentic Learning</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Young+Children%22">Young Children</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Children%22">Children</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Books%22">Books</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Childrens+Literature%22">Childrens Literature</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Object+Permanence%22">Object Permanence</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Cultural+Background%22">Cultural Background</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Self+Concept%22">Self Concept</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Control+Groups%22">Control Groups</searchLink>
– Name: DOI
  Label: DOI
  Group: ID
  Data: 10.1111/cogs.70000
– Name: ISSN
  Label: ISSN
  Group: ISSN
  Data: 0364-0213<br />1551-6709
– Name: Abstract
  Label: Abstract
  Group: Ab
  Data: Abstract The present study investigated children's understanding that an object's history may increase its significance, an appreciation that underpins the concept of "historical authenticity" (i.e., the idea that an item's history determines its true identity, beyond its functional or material qualities, leading people to value real items over copies or fakes). We examined the development of historical significance through the lens of parent-child conversations, and children's performance on an authenticity assessment. The final sample was American, 79.2% monoracial White, and mid-high socio-economic status (SES) and included 48 parent-child pairs: 24 with younger children (R = 3.5 to 4.5 years) and 24 with older children (R = 5.5 to 6.5 years). Parent-child pairs discussed three books we created, with three storylines: a museum (culturally authentic) storyline, a clean-up (personally authentic) storyline, and a control storyline. Across measures, conversations suggested that authenticity may begin as a "placeholder concept" that is initially rooted in a broad appreciation for the significance of old objects and only later filled in with specifics. This placeholder initially directs children's learning about authenticity by linking, in an unspecified way, the value and significance of objects to their past. For example, we found that young children appropriately appealed to history (vs. perceptual or functional features of objects) in contexts regarding authentic objects but struggled in determining which objects were more significant on the post-test assessment, suggesting that they attend to object history but are not yet sure how histories matter for making authenticity judgments. We also found some evidence that directing children's attention toward conceptual information related to object history may in turn direct them away from material or perceptual considerations, as seen in trade-offs in parents' and children's conversations. Together, this exploratory report offers many new avenues for work on the development of authenticity concepts in childhood.
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  Label: Entry Date
  Group: Date
  Data: 2024
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  Label: Accession Number
  Group: ID
  Data: EJ1446088
PLink https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=eric&AN=EJ1446088
RecordInfo BibRecord:
  BibEntity:
    Identifiers:
      – Type: doi
        Value: 10.1111/cogs.70000
    Languages:
      – Text: English
    PhysicalDescription:
      Pagination:
        PageCount: 34
    Subjects:
      – SubjectFull: Parent Child Relationship
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: History Instruction
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Concept Formation
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Authentic Learning
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Young Children
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Children
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Books
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Childrens Literature
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Object Permanence
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Cultural Background
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Self Concept
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Control Groups
        Type: general
    Titles:
      – TitleFull: Developing Concepts of Authenticity: Insights from Parents' and Children's Conversations about Historical Significance
        Type: main
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          Name:
            NameFull: Shaylene E. Nancekivell
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            NameFull: Sarah Stilwell
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            NameFull: Susan A. Gelman
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              M: 10
              Type: published
              Y: 2024
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            – Type: issn-print
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            – TitleFull: Cognitive Science
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