Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Prior research showed that young children prefer to seek helpfrom actors who have demonstrated active learning compe-tence. What inferences do people make based on the abil-ity to search effectively, for example by asking informativequestions? This project explores across two experiments towhat extent adults and children (3- to 9-year-olds) general-ize the ability to ask informative questions to other abili-ties/characteristics. We presented participants with one mon-ster who always asked informative questions and one whoalways asked uninformative questions. Participants had tochoose which monster they thought was more likely to pos-sess/was better at 12 different characteristics/abilities. Our re-sults show a clear developmental trend. Three- and 4-year-olds draw unsystematic inferences from the monsters question-asking expertise. Five- and 6-year-olds identified the betterquestion asker as better at everything. Seven- to 9-year-oldsshowed adult-like response patterns, selectively associating theability to ask good questions to related characteristics/abilities.