Weighing relationship type and competence: Developmental shift in help-seeking expectations among children aged 4 to...

Young children must determine from whom to seek help, yet little is known about how they weigh different social cues when forming expectations about others' help-seeking and how such weighting shifts during preschool years. The present research examined how children aged 4 to 6 years integrated relationship type (mother vs. unfamiliar adult) and competence cues in a third-party prediction task. In Study 1 (N = 194), 4-year-olds expected help-seekers to turn to mothers regardless of competence, whereas 5- and 6-year-olds increasingly incorporated competence when predicting help-seeking toward both mothers and unfamiliar adults. In Study 2 (N = 106), 5- and 6-year-olds expected help-seekers to prefer competent unfamiliar adults over incompetent mothers, while 4-year-olds showed no clear expectation preference. Together, these findings reveal a developmental shift in which competence cues gain increasing weight with age. More broadly, the results highlight how young children flexibly integrate multiple social cues when forming help-seeking expectations, underscoring the dynamic and context-sensitive nature of attachment representations as developing social-cognitive systems.