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Development of children's sensitivity to overinformativeness in learning and teaching
Hyowon Gweon1, Patrick Shafto2, Laura Schulz3
1Department of Psychology.
Developmental Psychology
|September 29, 2018
Summary
Children aged five and older understand that providing too much information can be inefficient. They adjust how much they teach based on what the learner already knows, showing developing communication skills.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Communication Studies
Background:
- Effective communication hinges on tailoring information quantity to the learner's existing knowledge.
- Overinformative communication can be inefficient for knowledgeable learners, while insufficient information hinders naïve learners.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate children's developing sensitivity to overinformative communication.
- To examine children's ability to adjust information delivery based on a learner's prior knowledge.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: Assessed preferences of 4- to 7-year-olds for different teaching styles (exhaustive vs. selective demonstrations) based on learner "common ground" (prior knowledge).
- Experiment 2: Evaluated whether 4- to 6-year-olds modulated their own teaching (exhaustive vs. selective) based on the learner's knowledge status.
Main Results:
- Five- to 7-year-olds preferred exhaustive teaching for naïve learners and selective teaching for knowledgeable learners (Experiment 1).
- Four-year-olds did not consistently show this preference.
- Five- and 6-year-olds adapted their own teaching, providing more information to naïve learners than to knowledgeable ones (Experiment 2).
Conclusions:
- Children by age five demonstrate sensitivity to overinformativeness and the informativeness-efficiency trade-off.
- They can reason about others' knowledge based on common ground and flexibly adapt their communication strategies as both learners and teachers.