From Exploration to Instruction: Children Learn From Exploration and Tailor Their Demonstrations to Observers’ Goals and Competence
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Gweon TEACH_draft_121317_R2_clean.pdf
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442.58 KB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
778f1dc89fa626a77bfb474bd03e275b
Author(s)
Gweon, Hyowon
Schulz, Laura E
Date Issued
January 2019
Journal
Child Development
Publisher
Wiley
Citation
Gweon, Hyowon and Laura Schulz. "From Exploration to Instruction: Children Learn From Exploration and Tailor Their Demonstrations to Observers’ Goals and Competence." Child Development 90, 1 (January/February 2019): e148-e164 © 2019 Society for Research in Child Development
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
This study investigated whether children learn from exploration and act as effective informants by providing informative demonstrations tailored to observers’ goals and competence. Children (4.0–6.9 years, N = 98) explored a causally ambiguous toy to discover its causal structure and then demonstrated the toy to a naive observer. Children provided more costly and informative evidence when the observer wanted to learn about the toy than observe its effects (Experiment 1) and when the observer was ordinary than exceptionally intelligent (Experiment 2). Relative to the evidence they generated during exploration, children produced fewer, less costly actions when the observer wanted or needed less evidence. Children understand the difference between acting‐to‐learn and acting‐to‐inform; after learning from exploration, they consider others’ goals and competence to provide “uninstructed instruction”.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13059
