Auditory hindsight bias in school-age children

Abstract

We report two experiments investigating hindsight bias in children, focusing on a rarely studied age range of 8-13 years. In Experiment 1, we asked children to complete both an auditory hindsight task and a visual hindsight task. Children exhibited hindsight bias in both tasks, and the bias decreased with age. In Experiment 2, we further explored children 's auditory hindsight bias by contrasting performance in hypothetical and memory designs (which previous research with adults had found to involve different mechanisms-fluency vs. memory reconstruction). Children exhibited auditory hindsight bias in both tasks, but only in the hypothetical design was the bias magnitude modulated by a priming manipulation designed to increase fluency, replicating and extending the pattern found in adults to children.

Keywords: Auditory hindsight bias; Children ‘s cognitive biases; Fluency; Hypothetical design; Memory design; Priming.