The Process by Which Others Learn Informs Young Children’s Decisions About Whom to ask for Help

• In Event: 2-105 - The Child as an Active Learner: Influences of Social-models, Curiosity, Strategy, and Executive Function

Integrative Statement

Children are active learners. They learn from actively exploring the world, and even when learning from others, children actively choose from whom to learn (e.g., Sobel & Kushnir, 2013). However, prior work on selective trust has focused on whether children can recognize “good teachers”, defined by their epistemic states and reliability as informants. Little is known about whether children have internal models of “good learners” and prefer to learn from others who can competently make novel discoveries on their own.

The current study investigates whether children are sensitive to the process by which others learn. Do children preferentially seek help from active learners over more passive learners, and does this preference depend on the problem children have to solve? In Exp.1, children (3- to 6-year-olds; N=120) were introduced to three learners: an Active learner who figured out how to activate a toy through her own independent exploration, an Instructed learner who was taught by someone else how to activate the toy, and a Passive learner who watched as another person actively explored and figured out the toy. Children then tried to activate three toys: the Original toy (the same toy the learners figured out), a toy similar to the Original but more complex (Similar toy), and a toy with causal affordances that were clearly different from the Original (Different toy). For each toy, children explored it, could not activate it, and then chose one of the learners to ask for help. Children were equally likely to seek help from all three learners on the Original and Different toys but preferred the Active learner on the Similar toy. An exploratory median age split revealed that children’s preference for the Active learner on the Similar toy was driven by the older half of participants.

Exp.2 explored whether children’s preference for the Active learner was merely due to the fact that she was “alone” while learning or rather reflected a genuine appreciation of the Active learner’s competence to discover a solution independently. Children (3- to 7-year-olds; N=150) asked for help on the same three toys (Original, Similar, Different) but from one of two learners: the same Instructed learner as Exp.1 and an Active learner who successfully figured out how to activate the Original toy through her own exploration, while another person watched but did not assist. Consistent with results from Exp.1, younger children showed no preference for either learner on any of the toys, but older children preferred the Active learner specifically on the Similar toy.

These results raise the possibility that children attribute an expertise, skill, or competence to active learners. Critically, children do not simply show a global preference for active learners; they selectively seek help when faced with similar tasks, suggesting that they consider such expertise as relevant to a particular set of tasks and not others. By the early school years (5- to 7-year-olds), children are sensitive to the process by which others learn and use this process to inform their decisions about whom to ask for help.

Authors

• Sophie Bridgers, Stanford University
  Presenting Author

• Hyowon Gweon, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Maria Bretzke, Max Planck Institute for Human Development
  Non-Presenting Author

• Costanza de Simone, Max Planck Institute for Human Development
  Non-Presenting Author

• Azzurra Ruggeri, Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development Berlin; Technical University Munich (School of Education)
  Non-Presenting Author