Who Knows Best? Preschoolers Sometimes Prefer Child Informants over Adult Informants

Do preschoolers think adults know more about everything than children? Or do they recognize that there are some things that children might know more about than adults? Three-, four-, and five-year olds (N = 65) were asked to decide whether an adult or child informant would better be able to answer a variety of questions about the nutritional value of foods and about toys. Children at all ages chose to direct the food questions to the adult and the toy questions to the child. Thus, there are some kinds of information for which preschoolers; expect that a child would be a better informant than an adult. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.