title: Preschoolers use intentional and pedagogical cues to guide inductive inferences and exploration.
abstract: Children are judicious social learners. They may be particularly sensitive to communicative actions done pedagogically for their benefit, as such actions may mark important, generalizable information. Three experiments (N = 224) found striking differences in preschoolers' inductive generalization and exploration of a novel functional property, depending on whether identical evidence for the property was produced accidentally, intentionally, or pedagogically and communicatively. Results also revealed that although 4-year-olds reserved strong generalizations for a property that is pedagogically demonstrated, 3-year-olds made such inferences when it was produced either intentionally or pedagogically. These findings suggest that by age 4 children assess whether evidence is produced for their benefit in gauging generalizability, giving them a powerful tool for acquiring important kind-relevant, generic knowledge.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. lpbutler@stanford.edu
authors.forename: Lucas P
authors.initials: LP
authors.lastname: Butler
authors.forename: Ellen M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Markman
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D005106:Exploratory Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005793:Generalization, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005868:Gestures; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology