Turkish- and English-speaking 3-year-old children are sensitive to the evidential strength of claims when revising their beliefs  

Individuals revise their beliefs based on the evidential strength of others’ claims. Unlike English, in languages such as Turkish, evidential marking is obligatory: speakers must express whether their claims are based on direct-observation or not. We investigated whether Turkish- and English-speaking 3- and 5-year-olds (N=146, 72 girls, based in Turkey and Canada) differed in their belief revision after hearing claims based on direct-observation, indirect-observation, or inference. We found the same pattern in both linguistic groups: 3-year-olds revised their beliefs more often when they heard claims based on direct-observation and inference than on indirect observation, whereas 5-year-olds showed no difference across different claims. By age 3, Turkish- and English-speaking children are sensitive to the strength of claims when revising their beliefs.