Preschool-Aged Children Jointly Consider Others’ Emotional Expressions and Prior Knowledge to Decide When to Explore

Yang Wu; Hyowon Gweon

doi:10.1111/cdev.13585

journal article May 01, 2021

Preschool-Aged Children Jointly Consider Others’ Emotional Expressions and Prior Knowledge to Decide When to Explore

Yang Wu

Hyowon Gweon

Child Development Vol. 92 No. 3 pp. 862-870 · Oxford University Press (OUP)

View at Publisher Save 10.1111/cdev.13585

Abstract

Abstract
Emotional expressions are abundant in children’s lives. What role do they play in children’s causal inference and exploration? This study investigates whether preschool-aged children use others’ emotional expressions to infer the presence of unknown causal functions and guide their exploration accordingly. Children (age: 3.0–4.9; N = 112, the United States) learned about one salient causal function of a novel toy and then saw an adult play with it. Children explored the toy more when the adult expressed surprise than when she expressed happiness (Experiment 1), but only when the adult already knew about the toy’s salient function (Experiment 2). These results suggest that children consider others’ knowledge and selectively interpret others’ surprise as vicarious prediction error to guide their own exploration.

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Details

Published: May 01, 2021
Vol/Issue: 92(3)
Pages: 862-870
License: View

Authors

Stanford University

Stanford University

Funding

National Science Foundation Award: 2019567

Jacobs Foundation

Paul and Lilah Newton Brain Science Award

Cite This Article

Yang Wu, Hyowon Gweon (2021). Preschool-Aged Children Jointly Consider Others’ Emotional Expressions and Prior Knowledge to Decide When to Explore. Child Development, 92(3), 862-870. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13585

Preschool-Aged Children Jointly Consider Others’ Emotional Expressions and Prior Knowledge to Decide When to Explore

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