Children Adapt Their Information Search to Goal and Statistical Structure of a Problem

To be efficient, problem solvers need to be adaptive, tailoring their information search to the specific problem at hand. Across two studies, we investigated the emergence and early development of children’s ability to adapt their information search to a given goal (Studies 1 and 2) and to the statistical structure of the problem space (Study 2) to maximize effectiveness. In Study 1, 3–6-year-olds (n = 105) decided which of two cues to look up, the arms or the legs of two monsters, to predict the winner of a throwing or jumping challenge, knowing that monsters with long arms were good throwers and those with long legs were good jumpers. Children’s ability to adaptively select relevant information and tailor their search to the goal increased with age, surpassing chance level between the ages of 4 and 5. Study 2 (7–14-year-olds and adults, n = 175) demonstrated this competence in a more complex task, additionally investigating whether children tailor their search to the statistical structure, that is, the distribution of cue values, in their search environment (e.g., how common long legs are). The results suggest high reliability in ignoring irrelevant cues (confirming the results from Study 1) and developmental patterns in children’s preferential treatment of cues of differing statistical frequency. Together, these studies contribute to the literature on information search adaptiveness by tracing for the first time the emergence and developmental trajectory of children’s ability to tailor predecisional search to the changing goals and environmental resources of the problem at hand.