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Multifaceted information-seeking motives in children

From an early age, children need to gather information to learn about their environment. Deciding which knowledge to pursue can be difficult because information can serve several, sometimes competing, purposes. Here, we examine the developmental trajectories of such diverse information-seeking motiv...

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Autores principales: Molinaro, Gaia, Cogliati Dezza, Irene, Bühler, Sarah Katharina, Moutsiana, Christina, Sharot, Tali
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10485006/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37679315
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-40971-x
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author Molinaro, Gaia
Cogliati Dezza, Irene
Bühler, Sarah Katharina
Moutsiana, Christina
Sharot, Tali
author_facet Molinaro, Gaia
Cogliati Dezza, Irene
Bühler, Sarah Katharina
Moutsiana, Christina
Sharot, Tali
author_sort Molinaro, Gaia
collection PubMed
description From an early age, children need to gather information to learn about their environment. Deciding which knowledge to pursue can be difficult because information can serve several, sometimes competing, purposes. Here, we examine the developmental trajectories of such diverse information-seeking motives. Over five experiments involving 521 children (aged 4–12), we find that school-age children integrate three key factors into their information-seeking choices: whether information reduces uncertainty, is useful in directing action, and is likely to be positive. Choices that likely reveal positive information and are useful for action emerge as early as age 4, followed by choices that reduce uncertainty (at ~age 5). Our results suggest that motives related to usefulness and uncertainty reduction become stronger with age, while the tendency to seek positive news does not show a statistically significant change throughout development. This study reveals how the relative importance of diverging, sometimes conflicting, information-seeking motives emerges throughout development.
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spelling pubmed-104850062023-09-09 Multifaceted information-seeking motives in children Molinaro, Gaia Cogliati Dezza, Irene Bühler, Sarah Katharina Moutsiana, Christina Sharot, Tali Nat Commun Article From an early age, children need to gather information to learn about their environment. Deciding which knowledge to pursue can be difficult because information can serve several, sometimes competing, purposes. Here, we examine the developmental trajectories of such diverse information-seeking motives. Over five experiments involving 521 children (aged 4–12), we find that school-age children integrate three key factors into their information-seeking choices: whether information reduces uncertainty, is useful in directing action, and is likely to be positive. Choices that likely reveal positive information and are useful for action emerge as early as age 4, followed by choices that reduce uncertainty (at ~age 5). Our results suggest that motives related to usefulness and uncertainty reduction become stronger with age, while the tendency to seek positive news does not show a statistically significant change throughout development. This study reveals how the relative importance of diverging, sometimes conflicting, information-seeking motives emerges throughout development. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-09-07 /pmc/articles/PMC10485006/ /pubmed/37679315 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-40971-x Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Molinaro, Gaia
Cogliati Dezza, Irene
Bühler, Sarah Katharina
Moutsiana, Christina
Sharot, Tali
Multifaceted information-seeking motives in children
title Multifaceted information-seeking motives in children
title_full Multifaceted information-seeking motives in children
title_fullStr Multifaceted information-seeking motives in children
title_full_unstemmed Multifaceted information-seeking motives in children
title_short Multifaceted information-seeking motives in children
title_sort multifaceted information-seeking motives in children
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10485006/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37679315
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-40971-x
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