Development of children’s sensitivity to overinformativeness in learning and teaching.
Name
2018_Gweon_Shafto_Schulz_DevPsych.pdf
Description
Accepted version
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662.36 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
0d8dc3157564583e255d857cc50023bf
Author(s)
Gweon, Hyowon
Shafto, Patrick
Schulz, Laura E
Date Issued
November 2018
Journal
Developmental Psychology
Publisher
American Psychological Association (APA)
Citation
Gweon, Hyowon et al., "Development of children’s sensitivity to overinformativeness in learning and teaching." Developmental Psychology 54, 11 (November 2018): 2113–25 ©2018 Authors
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Effective communication requires knowing the "right" amount of information to provide; what is necessary for a naïve learner to arrive at a target hypothesis may be superfluous and inefficient for a knowledgeable learner. The current study examines 4- to 7-year-olds' developing sensitivity to overinformative communication and their ability to decide how much information is appropriate depending on the learner's prior knowledge. In Experiment 1 (N = 184, age = 4.09 -7.98 years), 5- to 7-year-old children preferred teachers who gave costly, exhaustive demonstrations when learners were naïve, but preferred teachers who gave efficient, selective demonstrations when learners were already knowledgeable given their prior experience (i.e., common ground). However, 4-year-olds did not show a clear preference. In Experiment 2 (N = 80, age = 4.05- 6.99 years), we asked whether children flexibly modulated their own teaching based on learners' knowledge. Five and 6-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, were more likely to provide exhaustive demonstrations to naïve learners than to knowledgeable learners. These results suggest that by 5 years of age, children are sensitive to overinformativeness and understand the trade-off between informativeness and efficiency; they reason about what others know based on the presence or absence of common ground and flexibly decide how much information is appropriate both as learners and as teachers. ©2018 American Psychological Association.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1037/DEV0000580
