Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This paper investigates the emergence and development ofchildren’s ability to adapt their information search to differentgoals. In Study 1, 3- to 7-year-olds had to decide whether tostudy the arms or legs of two monsters to predict which wouldsucceed at a throwing vs. jumping challenge. Children’s abil-ity to adaptively select the relevant piece of information andtailor their search to the given goal increased with age, surpass-ing chance level around 4;6. Study 2 investigated additionaladaptation to distributions of, e.g., long arms in the search do-main. Preliminary results confirm the observed developmentaltrend in search adaptiveness and effectiveness, suggesting anability to tailor information search to the relevant distributionsin the environment. These studies provide first insights intothe development of adaptive information search given complexgoals, deepening our understanding of this key aspect of learn-ing, judgment and decision-making.