Motivated information search: Context-dependent efficiency in children and adults

While the motivation to gather accurate information emerges early in childhood, social motivations can modulate the drive for accuracy. Across two studies we investigate how social narratives can impact the efficiency of information search in children (6–14 years old), adolescents (14–17 years old), and adults. Work investigating the developmental trajectory of information-search strategies has found that efficiency begins to improve dramatically at age 3, and that children as young as 2 are able to tailor their search strategies to their environments to maximize information gain. In the presented studies (n = 174; n = 175), participants are told they are competing in a sporting event and that their team is either winning or losing. Participants are then tasked with playing a 20-Questions game to try to find a culprit guilty of foul play, and told that if they are not found the competition will be canceled. Whether the participant's team is winning or losing determines whether their team would benefit from finding the culprit. As hypothesized, we found that participants from all age groups searched more efficiently when finding the culprit was in their best interest. Our findings suggest that social contexts play a crucial role in modulating the efficiency of information search across age groups, particularly in comparison to their performance on a standard 20-Questions game, highlighting the importance of taking social contexts into account when designing new paradigms and tracing the developmental trajectory of children's information search strategies in lab settings and the real world. Public significance statement: This work highlights how our environments shape our motivations as we engage with information. Specifically, it examines how our beliefs and our social contexts influence what information we search for and how much of it we gather. In today's media landscape, where content reflects every conceivable viewpoint, it is essential to recognize how our interactions with information are influenced by our contexts. Making sense of these relationships is key to grasping how sources and content platforms shape our behavior with regard to what and how we search.