Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Prior work suggests that young children consider others’knowledge and expertise to decide from whom to learn. Dochildren also consider how others came to know what theyknow? Here we investigate young children’s sensitivity to theprocess by which people have learned. In Exp.1, 3- to 6-year-olds preferentially sought help from an active learner, who hadfigured out how to solve a problem by herself, over learnerswho had learned through passive observation or direct instruc-tion. Yet, this preference emerged only when the problem chil-dren needed to solve was related to the one the learners hadpreviously solved (i.e., when they thought the active learner’scompetence would be relevant). These findings suggest chil-dren inferred competence from the process of active learning,but considered this competence to be constrained to a partic-ular task rather than more broadly generalizeable. The resultsof Exp.2 (3- to 7-year-olds) suggest that younger children’slearner preference might be driven by more superficial cues re-lated to active learning such as being alone and that a moreabstract understanding of the process of active learning mightdevelop with age.