Children adapt their questions to achieve efficient search (2015)
Authors
Abstract
One way to learn about the world is by asking questions. We investigate how younger children (7- to 8-year-olds), older children (9- to 11-year-olds), and young adults (17- to 18-year-olds) ask questions to identify the cause of an event. We find a developmental shift in children's reliance on hypothesis-scanning questions (which test hypotheses directly) versus constraint-seeking questions (which reduce the space of hypotheses), but also that all age groups ask more constraint-seeking questions when hypothesis-scanning questions are least likely to pay off: When the solution is one among equally likely alternatives (Study 1) or when the problem is difficult (Studies 1 and 2). These findings are the first to demonstrate that even young children dynamically adapt their strategies for inquiry to increase the efficiency of information search.
Bibliographic entry
Ruggeri, A., & Lombrozo, T. (2015). Children adapt their questions to achieve efficient search. Cognition, 143, 203-216. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2015.07.004 (Full text)
Miscellaneous
| Publication year | 2015 | |
|---|---|---|
| Document type: | Article | |
| Publication status: | Published | |
| External URL: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.07.004 View | |
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