Reflective belief revision before the age of reason

Blakey, KH ORCID: 0000-0003-4347-6124, Dow, CL, Veit, A, Recelj, B, Virányi, Z, Melis, G and Rafetseder, E (2026) Reflective belief revision before the age of reason. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 270. ISSN 0022-0965

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Abstract

Young children can revise beliefs in light of new evidence, yet some philosophers argue that this is not true rationality. They define rationality as the capacity to reflect on and re-evaluate one’s reasons for beliefs, tying it to language and proposing that it emerges only around the so–called “age of reason” (age 6). In challenge to this, we tested whether children aged 3 to 6 ( N = 93) were capable of a basic form of reflective responsiveness to reasons: acquiring and responding to an undermining defeater—evidence that challenges the grounds for a belief—through exposure to overriding defeaters. In each trial, before choosing where to search, children observed a Reliable informant (100% accurate) and an Unreliable informant (50% accurate, 50% misleading) indicating one of two reward locations. Each misleading trial served as an overriding defeater, directly contradicting children’s initial belief about the reward location. Age and language predicted children’s tendency to follow the Reliable over the Unreliable informant suggesting they may have acquired an undermining defeater related to informant reliability. However, neither age nor language predicted preferences when the informants were pitted against each other in a new context. These findings suggest some basic capacity for reflective responsiveness to reasons may emerge earlier than the “age of reason”, more independently of language than some philosophical accounts have assumed, and may be grounded in capacities (overriding defeaters) already present at the unreflective level.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Belief revision; Reflective thinking; Rational thinking; Language development; Epistemic defeaters; Humans; Child Development; Thinking; Age Factors; Child; Child, Preschool; Female; Male; Cognitive Reflection; Belief revision; Epistemic defeaters; Language development; Rational thinking; Reflective thinking; Humans; Cognitive Reflection; Child, Preschool; Child; Child Development; Male; Female; Thinking; Age Factors; 5204 Cognitive and Computational Psychology; 52 Psychology; Pediatric Research Initiative; Clinical Research; Humans; Cognitive Reflection; Child, Preschool; Child; Child Development; Male; Female; Thinking; Age Factors; 1701 Psychology; 1702 Cognitive Sciences; Experimental Psychology; 5201 Applied and developmental psychology; 5202 Biological psychology; 5205 Social and personality psychology
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Divisions:	Psychology (from Sep 2019)
Publisher:	Elsevier BV
Date of acceptance:	10 May 2026
Date of first compliant Open Access:	15 September 2026
Date Deposited:	15 Sep 2026 08:42
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2026 08:42
DOI or ID number:	10.1016/j.jecp.2026.106547
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/29411

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