How do changes in learners’ knowledge influence information seeking? We showed preschoolers ( N = 100) uncertain outcomes for events and let them choose which event to resolve. We found that children whose intuitive theories were at immature stages were more likely to seek information to resolve uncertainty about an outcome in the related domains, but children with more mature knowledge were not. This result was replicated in a second experiment but with the nuance that children at intermediate stages of belief development—when the causal outcome would be most ambiguous—were the most motivated to resolve the uncertainty. This effect was not driven by general uncertainty at the framework level but, rather, by the impact that framework knowledge has in accessing uncertainty at the model level. These results are the first to show the relationship between a learning preference and the developmental stage of a child’s intuitive theory.

No abstract

Although a vast majority of U.S. children have access to mobile media such as smartphones at home, children from lower-income families spend more time using screen media than do their higher-income peers. Differences in early media experiences based on family income may influence how children think about media technologies. This study examined whether preschoolers' thinking about media varies by family income, with a focus on children's beliefs about the functions of media. Preschoolers (N = 55) aged 4-5 years old were presented with six photographs of different media (book, tablet, smartphone, TV, computer, and telephone) and asked to answer questions about identification, exposure, access, attribution of functions, and preferences regarding these media. Parental median income was estimated based on the family's residential zip code, and this was used to categorize children into lowerand higher-income groups. There were no significant differences between the lowerand higher-income groups in their identification of and exposure and access to these media. However, the lower-income group was more likely to say that smartphones could be used for learning than the higher-income group. Compared to the higherincome group, the lower-income group was more likely to attribute impossible functions to physical books such as talking to other people, taking pictures, or watching TV shows and movies. The lower-income group also attributed more functions than the higher-income group to books and tablets. Lastly, there was no income-group difference in children's preferences for media. Together, these findings suggest the importance of considering family contextual influences on children's understanding of media technologies.

Lieder and Griffiths present the computational framework “resource-rational analysis” to address the reverse-engineering problem in cognition. Here we discuss how developmental psychology affords a unique and critical opportunity to employ this framework, but which is overlooked in this piece. We describe how developmental change provides an avenue for ongoing work as well as inspiration for expansion of the resource-rational approach.

Despite limited memory capacity, children are exceptional learners. How might children engage in meaningful learning despite limited memory systems? Past research suggests that adults integrate category knowledge and noisy episodic traces to aid recall when episodic memory is noisy or incomplete (e.g. Hemmer & Steyvers, 2009). We suspect children utilize a similar process but integrate category and episodic traces in recall to a different degree. Here we conduct two experiments to empirically assess children’s color category knowledge (Study 1) and recall of target hue values (Study 2). In Study 1, although children’s generated hue values appear to be noisier than adults, we found no significant difference between children and adult’s generated color category means (prototypes), suggesting that preschool-aged children’s color categories are well established. In Study 2, we found that children’s (like adult’s) free recall of target hue values regressed towards color category means. We implemented three probabilistic memory models: one that combines category knowledge and specific target information (Integrative), a category only (Noisy Prototype) model, and a target only (Noisy Target) model to computationally evaluate recall performance. Consistent with previous studies with older children (Duffy, Huttenlocher, & Crawford, 2006), quantitative fits of the models to aggregate group-level data provided strong support for the Integrative process. However, at the individual subject level, a greater proportion of preschoolers’ recall was better fit by a Prototype only model. Our results provide evidence that the integration of category knowledge in episodic memory comes online early and strongly. Implications for how the greater reliance on category knowledge by preschoolers relative to adults might track with developmental shifts in relational episodic memory are discussed.