Preschoolers' information search strategies: Inefficient but adaptive
Although children's sensitivity to others' informativeness emerges early in life, their active information search becomes robustly efficient only around age 10. Young children's difficulty in asking efficient questions has often been hypothesized to be linked to their developing verba...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2023-01-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1080755/full |
| _version_ | 1797962013789388800 |
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| author | Kai-Xuan Chai Fei Xu Nora Swaboda Azzurra Ruggeri Azzurra Ruggeri Azzurra Ruggeri |
| author_facet | Kai-Xuan Chai Fei Xu Nora Swaboda Azzurra Ruggeri Azzurra Ruggeri Azzurra Ruggeri |
| author_sort | Kai-Xuan Chai |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Although children's sensitivity to others' informativeness emerges early in life, their active information search becomes robustly efficient only around age 10. Young children's difficulty in asking efficient questions has often been hypothesized to be linked to their developing verbal competence and growing vocabulary. In this paper, we offer for the first time a quantitative analysis of 4- to 6-year-old children's information search competence by using a non-verbal version of the 20-questions game, to gain a more comprehensive and fair picture of their active learning abilities. Our results show that, even in this version, preschoolers performed worse than simulated random agents, requiring more queries to reach the solution. However, crucially, preschoolers performed better than the simulated random agents when isolating the extra, unnecessary queries, which are made after only one hypothesis is left. When additionally isolating all the unnecessary queries, children's performance looked on par with that of the simulated optimal agents. Our study replicates and enriches previous research, showing an increase in efficiency across the preschool-aged years, but also a general lack of optimality that seems to be fundamentally driven by children's strong tendency to make unnecessary queries, rather than by their verbal immaturity. We discuss how children's non-optimal, conservative information-search strategies may be adaptive, after all. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-11T01:06:40Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-9457c93ccfee43e3a81778b19931b33d |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-11T01:06:40Z |
| publishDate | 2023-01-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-9457c93ccfee43e3a81778b19931b33d2023-01-04T12:11:44ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782023-01-011310.3389/fpsyg.2022.10807551080755Preschoolers' information search strategies: Inefficient but adaptiveKai-Xuan Chai0Fei Xu1Nora Swaboda2Azzurra Ruggeri3Azzurra Ruggeri4Azzurra Ruggeri5MPRG iSearch, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, GermanyDepartment of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United StatesMPRG iSearch, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, GermanyMPRG iSearch, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, GermanyDepartment of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Vienna, AustriaDepartment of Education, School of Social Sciences and Technology, Technical University of Munich, Munich, GermanyAlthough children's sensitivity to others' informativeness emerges early in life, their active information search becomes robustly efficient only around age 10. Young children's difficulty in asking efficient questions has often been hypothesized to be linked to their developing verbal competence and growing vocabulary. In this paper, we offer for the first time a quantitative analysis of 4- to 6-year-old children's information search competence by using a non-verbal version of the 20-questions game, to gain a more comprehensive and fair picture of their active learning abilities. Our results show that, even in this version, preschoolers performed worse than simulated random agents, requiring more queries to reach the solution. However, crucially, preschoolers performed better than the simulated random agents when isolating the extra, unnecessary queries, which are made after only one hypothesis is left. When additionally isolating all the unnecessary queries, children's performance looked on par with that of the simulated optimal agents. Our study replicates and enriches previous research, showing an increase in efficiency across the preschool-aged years, but also a general lack of optimality that seems to be fundamentally driven by children's strong tendency to make unnecessary queries, rather than by their verbal immaturity. We discuss how children's non-optimal, conservative information-search strategies may be adaptive, after all.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1080755/fullinformation searchstrategyefficiencyactive learningcognitive development |
| spellingShingle | Kai-Xuan Chai Fei Xu Nora Swaboda Azzurra Ruggeri Azzurra Ruggeri Azzurra Ruggeri Preschoolers' information search strategies: Inefficient but adaptive Frontiers in Psychology information search strategy efficiency active learning cognitive development |
| title | Preschoolers' information search strategies: Inefficient but adaptive |
| title_full | Preschoolers' information search strategies: Inefficient but adaptive |
| title_fullStr | Preschoolers' information search strategies: Inefficient but adaptive |
| title_full_unstemmed | Preschoolers' information search strategies: Inefficient but adaptive |
| title_short | Preschoolers' information search strategies: Inefficient but adaptive |
| title_sort | preschoolers information search strategies inefficient but adaptive |
| topic | information search strategy efficiency active learning cognitive development |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1080755/full |
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