Journal
COGNITION
Volume 120, Issue 3, Pages 322-330Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2010.10.001
Keywords
Pedagogy; Bayesian model; Exploratory play; Discovery; Causal learning; Cognitive development
Categories
Funding
- NICHD NIH HHS [R01 HD023103] Funding Source: Medline
- Division Of Research On Learning
- Direct For Education and Human Resources [0744213] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Motivated by computational analyses, we look at how teaching affects exploration and discovery. In Experiment 1, we investigated children's exploratory play after an adult pedagogically demonstrated a function of a toy, after an interrupted pedagogical demonstration, after a naive adult demonstrated the function, and at baseline. Preschoolers in the pedagogical condition focused almost exclusively on the target function; by contrast, children in the other conditions explored broadly. In Experiment 2, we show that children restrict their exploration both after direct instruction to themselves and after overhearing direct instruction given to another child; they do not show this constraint after observing direct instruction given to an adult or after observing a non-pedagogical intentional action. We discuss these findings as the result of rational inductive biases. In pedagogical contexts, a teacher's failure to provide evidence for additional functions provides evidence for their absence: such contexts generalize from child to child (because children are likely to have comparable states of knowledge) but not from adult to child. Thus, pedagogy promotes efficient learning but at a cost: children are less likely to perform potentially irrelevant actions but also less likely to discover novel information. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V.
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