Not Doing What You Are Told: Early Perseverative Errors in Updating Mental Representations Via Language

This research examined the ability of young (N = 96) children to learn about a change in the location of a hidden object, either via an adult's verbal testimony or from direct observation. Thirty-month-olds searched with equal accuracy whether they were told about the change or directly observed it. By contrast, when 23-month-olds were told about the change of location, they often returned to the container where they had last observed the object--even when that container was visibly empty. When interference from prior observational encoding was minimized, 23-month-olds, and even 19-month-olds, successfully updated their knowledge of the object's location on the basis of language. The processing demands of updating experience-based representations from new verbal information are discussed.