Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Effective practice is key to learning. Yet, it is unclear whether young children have the ability to make effective and adaptive training choices. In this project, we investigated 4- to 7-year-old children’s (n=146) ability to tailor their training strategies to optimize performance outcomes. Children were presented with one easy and one difficult guessing game and were asked to choose which game they wanted to practice. Crucially, before they chose, they were told that they would eventually be tested either on the game of their choice (Choice condition) or on the game the computer would randomly pick (Random condition). Contrary to our hypotheses, we found that condition per se did not predict children’s training choices. However, we found that older children were more likely to make effective and adaptive training choices than younger children. Overall, our results indicate that children’s training choices improve from ages 4 to 7 and inform the development of interventions to support strategic learning.