Four-Year-Olds Share General Knowledge and Use Generic Language When Teaching

Young children's receptiveness to teaching is unquestioned, but their understanding of pedagogy has only begun to be explored. Two experiments (N = 90; 45 female) with 4-year-olds from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds were conducted to test if they exchange general information and use generic language when teaching. Children in both experiments taught more general than episodic information and used more generic than episodic language when teaching. Experiment 2 showed that children did not prefer to report general information or use generic language in a non-pedagogical context. The findings suggest that by 4 years old, children understand that the goal of teaching is to transmit general knowledge.