Background

As adults, we ask questions because we are aware of gaps in our knowledge, aware that others know the facts needed to fill those gaps, and understand that their answers transfer knowledge from them to us. Is children’s question-asking informed by these same considerations?

In particular, do children consider a speaker’s knowledge (in terms of access to the relevant information) when deciding whether to ask that person a question?

Recent Findings

We presented 3- and 4-year-old children with a game in which together with the researcher, they were to identify which of three toys was hidden in a box. Sometimes the researcher had a look inside the box, so was knowledgeable, and sometimes she did not. If children understand that when the researcher had a look in the box she was more likely to give the right answer, they should seek her help more when she was knowledgeable than when she was, like the children, ignorant.

To explore this question, we gave children several different types of choices over several different experiments. For example, they could give their answer after having just guessed, after asking the researcher for help, or after peeking over a barrier to see what answer the researcher had put down.

We find an interesting difference in children's pattern of performance depending on what kind of answer the researcher gives the child. Children seem to be better able to track the researcher's knowledge when they can look at the researcher's answer than when they have to ask her for it. We are currently running follow-up studies to explore these findings, and to investigate their implications for children’s conceptions of knowledge transfer between minds

- back to top -

Robinson, E. J., Butterfill, S. A., & Nurmsoo, E. (under review). Gaining knowledge via other minds: Children’s flexible use of others as sources of information. Manuscript under review.

Nurmsoo, E., Robinson, E. J., & Butterfill, S. (June 2008). Extracting knowledge from other minds. Paper presented at the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Utrecht, June 25-27.