“I Want to Know More!”: Children Are Sensitive to Explanation Quality When Exploring New Information

Mills, Candice M.; Sands, Kaitlin R.; Rowles, Sydney P.; Campbell, I. L.

doi:10.1111/cogs.12706

Cited by 36 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(64 reference statements)

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“…Do preschool children explore because they are systematically trying to reduce uncertainty or maximize long-run rewards, or simply because they like to make new things happen, or are noisy and impulsive? Earlier studies have shown that children's exploration reflects their understanding (L. E. Schulz & Bonawitz, 2007;Bonawitz et al, 2012;Cook et al, 2011;Legare, 2012;Mills et al, 2019;Stahl & Feigenson, 2015), and this is consistent with our findings that children behaved differently depending on what they had learned (Study 4), and changed their behavior across trials (Studies 2-3). This suggests that children's exploration is not solely the result of noise or impulsiveness (see also Blanco & Sloutsky, 2019, 2020Sumner, Steyvers, et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Children are more exploratory and learn more than adults in an approach-avoid task

Liquin¹,

Gopnik²

2020

Preprint

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Intuitively, children appear to be more exploratory than adults, and this exploration seems to help children learn, but there have been few clear tests of this idea. We test whether exploration and learning change across development using a task that presents a “learning trap.” In this task, exploitation—maximizing immediate reward—may lead the learner to draw incorrect conclusions, while exploration may lead to better learning but be more costly. In Studies 1 and 2, we find that preschoolers and school-aged children explore more than adults and learn the true structure of the environment better. Study 3 demonstrates that children explore more than adults even though they understand that their choices are risky, and also shows that exploration and learning are correlated. Study 4 provides evidence for a causal link between children’s increased exploration and more accurate learning, and it shows that children use what they have learned to make decisions. Together, these studies support the idea that children may be more exploratory than adults and learn more as result.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Children are more exploratory and learn more than adults in an approach-avoid task

Liquin¹,

Gopnik²

2020

Preprint

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“…Our focus on the delivery of scientific content is consistent with research indicating that children are not only sensitive to the content of information when making inferences about from whom to learn but are also sensitive to the manner in which that content is delivered (Corriveau and Kurkul, 2014;Mercier et al, 2014;Kurkul and Corriveau, 2018;Mills et al, 2019). Specifically, we explore delivery of scientific content via two different pedagogical approaches they could use when participating in a scientific activity with their child.…”

Section: The Role Of Parental Explanations In Early Science Learningmentioning

confidence: 60%

Investigating Science Together: Inquiry-Based Training Promotes Scientific Conversations in Parent-Child Interactions

2020

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This study examined the effects of two pedagogical training approaches on parentchild dyads' discussion of scientific content in an informal museum setting. Fortyseven children (mean age = 5.43) and their parents were randomly assigned to training conditions where an experimenter modeled one of two different pedagogical approaches when interacting with the child and a science-based activity: (1) a scientific inquiry-based process or (2) a scientific statement-sharing method. Both approaches provided the same information about scientific mechanisms but differed in the process through which that content was delivered. Immediately following the training, parents were invited to model the same approach with their child with a novel science-based activity. Results indicated significant differences in the process through which parents prompted discussion of the targeted information content: when talking about causal scientific concepts, parents in the scientific inquiry condition were significantly more likely to pose questions to their child than parents in the scientific statements condition. Moreover, children in the scientific inquiry condition were marginally more responsive to parental causal talk and provided significantly more scientific content in response. These findings provide initial evidence that training parents to guide their children using scientific inquiry-based approaches in informal learning settings can encourage children to participate in more joint scientific conversations.

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“…These approaches depend highly on the user's expertise and established vocabulary that form a basis for revealing relevant underlying causes and relationships. As already mentioned, the terms have evolved from research on scientific explanations and refer to an explainee experiencing a specific knowledge gap [44]. However, in natural interactions, the explanans and explanandum might be underspecified or not defined at the beginning of an interaction.…”

Section: Dynamics Of Understandingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explanation as a Social Practice: Toward a Conceptual Framework for the Social Design of AI Systems

Rohlfing

Cimiano

Scharlau

et al. 2021

IEEE Trans. Cogn. Dev. Syst.

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The recent surge of interest in explainability in artificial intelligence (XAI) is propelled by not only technological advancements in machine learning, but also by regulatory initiatives to foster transparency in algorithmic decision making. In this article, we revise the current concept of explainability and identify three limitations: passive explainee, narrow view on the social process, and undifferentiated assessment of understanding. In order to overcome these limitations, we present explanation as a social practice in which explainer and explainee co-construct understanding on the microlevel. We view the co-construction on a microlevel as embedded into a macrolevel, yielding expectations concerning, e.g., social roles or partner models: Typically, the role of the explainer is to provide an explanation and to adapt it to the current level of understanding of the explainee; the explainee, in turn, is expected to provide cues that guide the explainer. Building on explanations being a social practice, we present a conceptual framework that aims to guide future research in XAI. The framework relies on the key concepts of monitoring and scaffolding to capture the development of interaction. We relate our conceptual framework and our new perspective on explaining to transparency and autonomy as objectives considered for XAI.

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“I Want to Know More!”: Children Are Sensitive to Explanation Quality When Exploring New Information

Cited by 36 publications

References 42 publications

Children are more exploratory and learn more than adults in an approach-avoid task

Children are more exploratory and learn more than adults in an approach-avoid task

Investigating Science Together: Inquiry-Based Training Promotes Scientific Conversations in Parent-Child Interactions

Explanation as a Social Practice: Toward a Conceptual Framework for the Social Design of AI Systems

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