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Young children consider the expected utility of others’ learning to decide what to teach

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Listed:
  • Sophie Bridgers

    (Stanford University)

  • Julian Jara-Ettinger

    (Yale University)

  • Hyowon Gweon

    (Stanford University)

Abstract

Direct instruction facilitates learning without the costs of exploration, yet teachers must be selective because not everything can nor needs to be taught. How do we decide what to teach and what to leave for learners to discover? Here we investigate the cognitive underpinnings of the human ability to prioritize what to teach. We present a computational model that decides what to teach by maximizing the learner’s expected utility of learning from instruction and from exploration, and we show that children (aged 5–7 years) make decisions that are consistent with the model’s predictions (that is, minimizing the learner’s costs and maximizing the rewards). Children flexibly considered either the learner’s utility or their own, depending on the context, and even considered costs they had not personally experienced, to decide what to teach. These results suggest that utility-based reasoning may play an important role in curating cultural knowledge by supporting selective transmission of high-utility information.

Suggested Citation

  • Sophie Bridgers & Julian Jara-Ettinger & Hyowon Gweon, 2020. "Young children consider the expected utility of others’ learning to decide what to teach," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(2), pages 144-152, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:4:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1038_s41562-019-0748-6
    DOI: 10.1038/s41562-019-0748-6
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    Cited by:

    1. Manuel Bohn & Michael Henry Tessler & Megan Merrick & Michael C. Frank, 2021. "How young children integrate information sources to infer the meaning of words," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 5(8), pages 1046-1054, August.

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