The Dynamics of Children’s Information Search

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

In learning about the world, children do not just passively take in information. Instead children are active, curious, and discerning pursuers of information, and they prioritize some sources and kinds of information over others. The four papers in this symposium attempt to better understand the ways in which children (and adults) decide which information to pursue.
The first paper shows that four- to seven-year-olds and adults prefer novelty when seeking information but not when seeking resources, indicating that preferences for novelty can diminish and even reverse when seeking novelty brings risk and commitment. The second paper shows that surprisingness has diminishing returns in information search, as four- to seven-year-olds are most curious about moderately counterintuitive items, over unlikely or very counterintuitive items. The third paper shows that children change their information-seeking strategies to maximize learning about populations of items, as they make trade-offs between specific information and generalizable information given how representative a sample is of the population. The fourth paper shows that preschoolers’ information seeking is greatest when they are moderately uncertain, but avoid information when highly uncertain to conserve cognitive effort for future decisions.
Together these findings reveal that children flexibly seek information from novel and uncertain stimuli for when it will be maximally informative and have the greatest long-term utility.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chair

• Claudia Sehl, University of Waterloo

Individual Presentations

• Children and Adults Prefer Learning About Novel Objects but Having Familiar Ones - Presenting Author: Claudia Sehl, University of Waterloo; Non-Presenting Author: Ori Friedman, University of Waterloo; Non-Presenting Author: Stephanie Denison, University of Waterloo

• Surprise! Minimally-Counterintuitive Stimuli Trigger Greater Curiosity than Merely Improbable Stimuli - Presenting Author: Casey Lewry, Princeton University; Non-Presenting Author: Sera Gorucu, Princeton University; Non-Presenting Author: Emily G Liquin, Princeton University; Non-Presenting Author: Tania Lombrozo, Princeton University

• Children’s Weighing of Local and Global Effectiveness in Information Search - Presenting Author: Andreas Domberg, Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie; Non-Presenting Author: Caren M. Walker, University of California - San Diego; Non-Presenting Author: Azzurra Ruggeri, Max-Planck Institute for Human Development

• Adults and Children Rationally Account for Future Numerical Decisions When Choosing to Gather More Information - Presenting Author: Jinjing Jenny Wang, Rutgers University - New Brunswick; Non-Presenting Author: Elizabeth Bonawitz, Rutgers University - Newark