Sources of Developmental Change in the Efficiency of Information Search
Sources of Developmental Change in the Efficiency of Information Search
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DOI：
10.1037/dev0000240
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发表时间：
2016-12-01
影响因子：
4
通讯作者：
Xu, Fei
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ruggeri, Azzurra;Lombrozo, Tania;Xu, Fei
儿童是积极的学习者：他们不仅从人们提供的信息和他们碰巧观察到的证据中学习，而且通过积极地寻求信息。然而，儿童的信息搜索策略通常不如成年人有效。在两项研究中，我们分离了儿童（7岁和10岁）和成人如何搜索信息的发展变化的潜在来源。为此，我们开发了一个分层版本的20个问题游戏，参与者要么提问（研究1），要么测试单个对象（研究2），以发现嵌套结构（例如，动物、鸟类或猫头鹰）中哪一类对象具有新颖的属性。我们还开发了一个任务的计算模型，使我们能够以定量的方式评估绩效。正如预期的那样，我们发现信息搜索的效率在不断提高。此外，我们还证明了参与者的性能超过随机搜索，但没有达到最优性能。我们发现，对于儿童的低效率源于超出单个对象或假设层面的思维困难这一观点，有不同的支持。相反，我们揭示了一个以前没有记载的发展变化的来源：儿童比成年人更有可能继续他们的信息搜索，超过一个单一的假设，因此提出问题和选择与零信息增益相关的对象。这表明，信息搜索效率发展变化的一个关键来源在于儿童的“停止规则”。
Children are active learners: they learn not only from the information people offer and the evidence they happen to observe, but by actively seeking information. However, children's information search strategies are typically less efficient than those of adults. In two studies, we isolate potential sources of developmental change in how children (7- and 10-year-olds) and adults search for information. To do so, we develop a hierarchical version of the 20-questions game, in which participants either ask questions (Study 1) or test individual objects (Study 2) to discover which category of objects within a nested structure (e.g., animals, birds, or owls) has a novel property. We also develop a computational model of the task, which allows us to evaluate performance in quantitative terms. As expected, we find developmental improvement in the efficiency of information search. In addition, we show that participants' performance exceeds random search, but falls short of optimal performance. We find mixed support for the idea that children's inefficiency stems from difficulty thinking beyond the level of individual objects or hypotheses. Instead, we reveal a previously undocumented source of developmental change: Children are significantly more likely than adults to continue their search for information beyond the point at which a single hypothesis remains, and thus to ask questions and select objects associated with zero information gain. This suggests that one crucial source of developmental change in information search efficiency lies in children's "stopping rules."