Young children infer the informativeness of others' praise

Praise is not only rewarding but also informative. It can provide children with information about their competence, especially when they are uncertain or unable to judge for themselves. Not all praise is equally meaningful, however: someone who praises only high-quality work is more informative than someone who praises indiscriminately. Across four experiments, we find that 4- to 5-year-old U.S. children-from both in-person preschool and online samples-can infer the informativeness of others' praise based on the statistical dependence between praise and the quality of work evaluated. Participants were more likely to endorse praise from a teacher whose previous praise covaried with the quality of work over a teacher who praised indiscriminately or a teacher who praised only lower quality work (Experiment 1). Although children did not show a preference between teachers when seeking out praise for themselves (Experiment 2), they sought out praise from different teachers on behalf of another learner depending on the learner's goal (Experiments 3-4). Collectively, these findings show that even young children understand that praise is more than just positive reinforcement. Rather, they can reason about a speaker's inferred informativeness and use this to guide whose praise to seek out and endorse. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).