Members of the current generation of young children have been exposed to technological informants, primarily consisting of devices that search the Internet for information, nearly since birth. However, little is known about how young children explore information using these digital sources. To address this issue, 30 preschool children generated questions about unfamiliar animals that were to be answered by either a human or technological informant (i.e., an Internet search program). Children also completed a measure of biological and psychological attributions to different types of information sources. Overall, children generated similar numbers of questions for each informant, and a similar proportion of their questions were causal in nature. Children also attributed few biological and psychological characteristics to the Internet search program. This suggests that, despite understanding that technological devices share few biological and psychological properties with people, young children seek out information in similar ways from human and technological information sources.
As human beings, we have a natural propensity to ask questions and seek out information about the world around us. If the answers to our questions are not readily observable, we look for answers from other sources. For the vast majority of human history, these sources have consisted primarily of other people (with the later addition of books, radio, and other media). Seeking out information sources often requires time and effort, and even then the answer they provide might be “I don’t know.”
However, in the past few decades, there has been a dramatic change in how people look for answers to their questions. With the advent of the Internet, questions that would have required consulting an expert, or a trip to the library, can now be answered within milliseconds by consulting an Internet search engine. In addition, devices such as smartphones have made it possible to quickly and easily access an enormous amount of information from nearly anywhere in the world. Yet, despite the fact that nearly 43% of the world’s population now has access to the Internet (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm), little is known about how access to the Internet influences the development of information-seeking behaviors.
One issue that has been of interest to both popular
commentators and researchers is whether Internet use
has consequences for curiosity and exploration. Some
commentators have argued that access to information
via technology and the Internet is diminishing our
cognitive capacity and intelligence
The study described here examines how consulting a
person or the Internet as an information source affects
children’s information-seeking behaviors. Children in
many modern communities have been exposed to
technological devices that can access the Internet nearly
from birth, and they frequently observe adults using
these devices to obtain information. Anecdotally,
parents report that their young children ask them to
look up information using Google or other search
engines – although they do so even for questions that
cannot be answered by information available via the
Internet
Although, to the best of our knowledge, there is no
research looking at the questions children ask of
technological informants, there is ample existing
research examining the developmental trajectory of
children’s information-seeking via questions. By age 4,
children are more likely to ask questions of more
knowledgeable informants than less knowledgeable
ones
In addition, by age 5, children are capable of
formulating questions that will allow them to solve
problems
Furthermore, our study examines whether children
direct different types of questions to a human or
technological informant. Young children are highly
motivated to seek out causal explanations, and they ask
appropriate “how” and “why” questions in order to
obtain these explanations
Finally, we are interested in how children’s
information-seeking behaviors are related to the ways
in which they conceptualize human and technological
sources. Some insight into this issue can be gained
from existing research examining how children
conceptualize computers and their capabilities. For
instance, although young children understand the
biological and psychological differences between
humans and computers
Thirty children ranging from 4.36 to 5.89 years (Mage = 4.89, 16 males) participated at preschools and kindergartens in an urban area. The majority of the children were identified by their parents as CaucasianAmerican and non-Hispanic. Children were interviewed individually by an experimenter in a quiet area of their school.
The procedure was loosely based on the paradigm developed by Greif and colleagues (2006), where children encounter unfamiliar animals and are encouraged to generate questions about each animal. Children interacted with two informants: a person and an Internet search engine. Because questions are typically presented to human and technological informants in different ways (e.g., verbal vs. typed on a keyboard) and this might affect children’s behavior, the experimenter “interacted” with both informants via a laptop computer with a 15-inch screen. Information was submitted to both informants by typing.
The Internet search engine was represented using a window labeled “search” that contained a magnifying glass icon (see Figure 1a). The human informant was presented in a schematically similar manner in a window labeled “chat” (see Figure 1b). The graphic in this window was a silhouette of a person. Both windows featured an editable text area where the experimenter could type in a question with a question mark button to the right, which the experimenter hit to transmit the question to the informant.
Other materials included full color images of each of the four target animals (pangolin, colugo, echidna, and tarsier) printed on separate sheets of paper.
At the beginning of the experimental session, the experimenter informed children that they would be learning about animals from two different sources and explained that one source was “a computer program that can look for answers to questions on the Internet” and the other source was “a live video chat with a person who lives in another city.” During the introduction, the experimenter opened and displayed the corresponding windows for each source.
Familiarization Trials Each session continued with 2 familiarization trials that involved questions about information familiar to young children (e.g., what animal says “moo”?). The experimenter read each question aloud as she typed the question into each informant’s text box and each informant gave an answer in turn. For the human informant, when the question mark button was pressed, it was replaced with video of an adult male who presented evidence by looking down (off screen) for approximately 5 seconds. He then looked back up as he presented his response by holding up an image printed on a sheet of paper. For the technological informant, when the button was pushed, the magnifying glass graphic disappeared and was replaced by a large rotating hourglass. After rotating for 5 seconds, the hourglass disappeared and was replaced by an image representing the program’s response to the query (e.g., an image of a rabbit in response to the query “what animal eats carrots?”). The experimenter also pointed at each image and said its name (e.g., “rabbit”) after it appeared.
The first informant’s response remained on screen while the experimenter queried the other informant and that informant’s answer appeared on the screen. Thus, both responses were available at the end of each trial. Children were then asked to state the correct answer to each question. The order in which the informants were queried was counterbalanced so that half of the participants always saw the human informant answer the question first, and the other half always saw the technological informant answer first. Following the familiarization trials, the experimenter cleared both windows from the screen and participants were presented with the question trials.
Question Trials The experimenter introduced the first pair of question trials by telling the child that they would have a chance to learn more about some new animals by asking the person questions. She then opened the “chat” window only, which appeared in the center of the screen. Children were instructed to tell the experimenter their questions about the animal and the experimenter would type the questions. Children were told that they could ask as many questions as they wanted, and that they would receive the answers later.
The experimenter began each trial by placing a photo of an animal on the table in front of the child and asking: “Do you know what this is called?” If the child answered that they did not know, the experimenter continued by stating “It’s a [animal name]. What questions do you want to ask the person about the [animal]?” If the child named the animal incorrectly, the experimenter corrected them by introducing the animal’s name. Each time the child asked a question, the experimenter repeated the question while typing it into the window on the computer screen. The experimenter then submitted the question to the information source, and the child had the opportunity to ask another question. There was no limit on the number of questions children could generate. However, if the child paused for more than 10 seconds, the experimenter asked the child if s/he had any more questions about the animal. If the child did not generate additional questions, the trial ended.
Following the second trial, the experimenter cleared the screen and stated that now the child would be learning about animals from the computer program. She then followed the same procedure as with the first set of trials, entering the child’s question in the “search” window instead.
The order in which the child encountered the informants (person or computer program first) and the order in which the animals were presented was counterbalanced between subjects.
Attribution Trials The goal of this task was to examine children’s intuitions about the biological and psychological nature of human and technological entities. Children were instructed to answer yes or no to a series of questions about four target items presented as photos on cards: a person (represented by an image of the man in the chat window from the familiarization trials), a computer program (represented by an image of the search window from the familiarization trials), a book, and a bird. The book and the bird were included to provide comparison points with the human and technological sources. The experimenter introduced each object by stating “This is a [object name]” and then asked 7 questions in the form of “Can this one ____?” The questions addressed biological processes (“eat”), perception (“see things”), cognition (“think”), emotion (“feel happy”), social awareness (“tell how you feel”), intentionality (“want to help you”) and pedagogical capacity (“teach you something”).
All children correctly identified the correct answers in the familiarization trials and no child was able to initially name the animals correctly, confirming that the animals were unfamiliar to all of the children.
Question Trials There were a total of 215 questions asked by 26 participants. (Four children did not ask questions of either informant.) For our initial analysis, we calculated the combined number of questions over the two trials asked of each informant. Preliminary analyses showed no gender differences nor effects of the order in which the informants or animals were introduced so these variables were excluded from further analysis. A paired samples t-test showed no difference between the number of questions children asked of the human (M = 4.07, SD = 3.45) and the computer program (M = 3.47, SD = 2.54), t(29) = 1.57, p = .124.
In order to examine potential differences in the content of the questions children directed to the human or technological informant, we calculated the proportion of questions each child asked of each source that used the terms “why” or “how.” (The two “how” questions related to the animal’s sleep and movement patterns, and were causal in nature.) We found that 38% of the questions directed to the human and 44% of the questions directed to the computer sought causal explanations, yielding no significant difference in the proportion of causal questions children asked of each informant, t(24) = .998, p = .328 (see Figure 2). 120
Attribution Trials Although four children did not ask questions, all 30 participants successfully completed the familiarization and attribution trials. Thus, we included every child tested in our analyses. For these trials, we calculated a score of 0-7 for the total number of characteristics children attributed to each object. We analyzed these data using a repeatedmeasures ANOVA with Object-type as a withinsubjects factor. This test revealed a significant main effect of Object-type, F(3,87) = 68.32, p < .001, ƞp2 = .703. Bonferroni-corrected post-hoc analyses revealed that significantly more attributions were made to the human than to the bird, computer program, or book (ps < .001). The bird represented an intermediate level of attributions, which was significantly lower than the human, but still significantly greater than the computer program or book (ps < .05). The number of attributions to the computer program or book did not significantly differ, p = 1.00.
Although these differences are important, the attribution task included some characteristics that were not essential to our goal of evaluating human versus technological informants (e.g., questions about physical or perceptual capabilities – questions that primarily ensured that children were paying attention and knew how human and technological informants differ). Thus, we conducted a second analysis focused more narrowly on attributions about thinking and teaching by combining responses to the cognition and pedagogical capacity items to create a more focused composite score. We analyzed this data as we did the full set of attributions, again finding a significant main effect for Object-type F(1,29) = 5.12, p < .05, ƞp2 = .15. Post-hoc analyses revealed a pattern that differed slightly from our findings including all attributions. As in our initial analysis, significantly more attributions were made to the human (M = 1.87) than to the bird, computer program, or book, p < .001, but the bird, computer program, and book did not differ from each other (Ms between .57 and .67).
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Relationship between questions asked and attributions We performed a correlational analysis to investigate whether the content or number of children’s questions were related to their attributions of biological and psychological characteristics to the computer program. We found no significant correlations between children’s rate of asking questions of each informant or the proportion of causal questions asked and the number of characteristics attributed to the computer program. There was also no relationship between the number or nature of the questions asked and children’s attribution of the capacity to think and teach to the computer program. Thus, children’s questions appeared to be largely independent of the characteristics that children attributed to technological informants.
We examined what kinds of information 4- and
5year-old children seek from a human or a technological
informant (i.e., an Internet search program), and how
their information seeking behavior relates to their
attributions of psychological and biological
characteristics to technological informants. Our
methods provided children with an opportunity to
utilize one of their most powerful and natural learning
mechanisms: asking questions. We presented children
with unfamiliar animals, knowing that these effectively
provoked questions in prior studies
Our data reveal that children’s question-asking
behaviors were similar in quality and quantity for both
humans and computers. Children asked many questions,
and the proportion of causal questions asked did not
vary between the two informants. One interpretation of
these data is that children were more focused on the
subject of their questions (i.e., the unfamiliar animals)
than on the nature of the information source. They may
also view both information sources as equally capable
of answering both causal and non-causal questions
about animals, although perhaps children would have
made a greater distinction between information sources
if the questions were in another domain, such as moral
reasoning
In the attribution task, we measured children’s
intuitions about the biological and psychological
characteristics of human and technological informants.
Despite treating human and technological information
sources very similarly in terms of their question-asking
behaviors, children’s attributions of characteristics to
human and technological sources were quite different.
Although children asked the same kinds of questions of
the person and the Internet search engine when allowed
to do so, they did not explicitly state that the Internet
search engine had characteristics that would allow it to
be an effective teacher (such as the capacity for
thought, intention, and pedagogy). Thus, children’s
explicit understanding of computers as a
nonpedagogical entity appeared to have no meaningful
relationship to their question-asking behaviors. That
said, relatively few children in our sample attributed
pedagogical characteristics to the computer program.
This stands in contrast to the adult intuition that
computer programs, and particularly Internet search
engines, can be effective means of obtaining
information and learning new concepts
These findings also raise important questions for future research regarding the broader consequences of obtaining information from technological informants. Why do children ask similar questions of information sources that are teachers and non-teachers? Do children co-opt question-asking behaviors that are usually targeted at pedagogical sources, or do they treat technological informants differently from other information sources? It would also be informative to examine how children reconcile their implicit behavior toward technological informants (e.g., asking them questions of the same nature that they ask of humans) and their explicit beliefs about technology, and whether this changes over the course of development.
In conclusion, our current findings represent an important first step toward understanding how growing up surrounded by information technology affects children’s curiosity and exploration of information. As the devices that search the Internet become more readily available and children encounter them at younger ages, it is essential that we understand children’s assumptions about the capacities and limitations of technological informants and use this understanding to inform the ways in which children interact with and learn from technology.
This research was supported in part by funding from the National Science Foundation, CAREER grant DRL1149116 to PS. Thank you to Jacob Messmer, Kayla Renner, and Gretchen Santana for their assistance with data collection. We would also like to thank the staff, children, and parents at St. Paul School and Keneseth Israel Preschool in Louisville, KY.