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Preschoolers prefer to learn causal information

Young children, in general, appear to have a strong drive to explore the environment in ways that reveal its underlying causal structure. But are they really attuned specifically to casual information in this quest for understanding, or do they show equal interest in other types of non-obvious infor...

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Autores principales: Alvarez, Aubry L., Booth, Amy E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4327508/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25762945
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00060
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author Alvarez, Aubry L.
Booth, Amy E.
author_facet Alvarez, Aubry L.
Booth, Amy E.
author_sort Alvarez, Aubry L.
collection PubMed
description Young children, in general, appear to have a strong drive to explore the environment in ways that reveal its underlying causal structure. But are they really attuned specifically to casual information in this quest for understanding, or do they show equal interest in other types of non-obvious information about the world? To answer this question, we introduced 20 three-year-old children to two puppets who were anxious to tell the child about a set of novel artifacts and animals. One puppet consistently described causal properties of the items while the other puppet consistently described carefully matched non-causal properties of the same items. After a familiarization period in which children learned which type of information to expect from each informant, children were given the opportunity to choose which they wanted to hear describe each of eight pictured test items. On average, children chose to hear from the informant that provided causal descriptions on 72% of the trials. This preference for causal information has important implications for explaining the role of conceptual information in supporting early learning and may suggest means for maximizing interest and motivation in young children.
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spelling pubmed-43275082015-03-11 Preschoolers prefer to learn causal information Alvarez, Aubry L. Booth, Amy E. Front Psychol Psychology Young children, in general, appear to have a strong drive to explore the environment in ways that reveal its underlying causal structure. But are they really attuned specifically to casual information in this quest for understanding, or do they show equal interest in other types of non-obvious information about the world? To answer this question, we introduced 20 three-year-old children to two puppets who were anxious to tell the child about a set of novel artifacts and animals. One puppet consistently described causal properties of the items while the other puppet consistently described carefully matched non-causal properties of the same items. After a familiarization period in which children learned which type of information to expect from each informant, children were given the opportunity to choose which they wanted to hear describe each of eight pictured test items. On average, children chose to hear from the informant that provided causal descriptions on 72% of the trials. This preference for causal information has important implications for explaining the role of conceptual information in supporting early learning and may suggest means for maximizing interest and motivation in young children. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-02-13 /pmc/articles/PMC4327508/ /pubmed/25762945 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00060 Text en Copyright © 2015 Alvarez and Booth. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Alvarez, Aubry L.
Booth, Amy E.
Preschoolers prefer to learn causal information
title Preschoolers prefer to learn causal information
title_full Preschoolers prefer to learn causal information
title_fullStr Preschoolers prefer to learn causal information
title_full_unstemmed Preschoolers prefer to learn causal information
title_short Preschoolers prefer to learn causal information
title_sort preschoolers prefer to learn causal information
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4327508/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25762945
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00060
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