The Development of Children's Information Gathering: To Look or to Ask?

The testimony of others and direct experience play a major role in the development of children's knowledge. Children actively use questions to seek others' testimony and explore the environment. It is unclear though whether children distinguish when it is better to ask from when it is bett...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Developmental psychology 2013-03, Vol.49 (3), p.533-542
Main Authors: Fitneva, Stanka A, Lam, Nietzsche H. L, Dunfield, Kristen A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age Differences
Age Factors
Bias
Child
Child development
Child Development - physiology
Child, Preschool
Childhood
Childhood Development
Children
Children & youth
Cognitive Development
Concept Formation - physiology
Data collection
Developmental psychology
Developmental Stages
Efficacy
Epistemology
Experience
Experiences (Events)
Experiential Learning
Female
Human
Humans
Information
Information gathering
Information Seeking
Information Skills
Knowledge
Learning
Learning - physiology
Male
Preferences
Property
Psychological Tests
Questioning
Questioning Techniques
Role
Self-Confidence
Young Children
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Summary:The testimony of others and direct experience play a major role in the development of children's knowledge. Children actively use questions to seek others' testimony and explore the environment. It is unclear though whether children distinguish when it is better to ask from when it is better to try to find an answer by oneself. In 2 experiments, we examined the ability of 4- and 6-year-olds to select between looking and asking to determine visible and invisible properties of entities (e.g., hair color vs. knowledge of French). All children chose to look more often for visible than invisible properties. However, only 6-year-olds chose above chance to look for visible properties and to ask for invisible properties. Four-year-olds showed a preference for looking in one experiment and asking in the other. The results suggest substantial development in the efficacy of children's learning in early childhood. (Contains 3 figures, 2 tables and 2 footnotes.)
ISSN:0012-1649
1939-0599
DOI:10.1037/a0031326