@inproceedings{75ab7b9703a044d19e4bd567758cbe14,
title = "Desirable difficulties in the development of active inquiry skills",
abstract = "This study explores developmental changes in the ability to ask informative questions. We hypothesized an intrinsic link between the ability to update beliefs in light of evidence and the ability to ask informative questions. Four- to ten-year-old children played an iPad game asking them to identify a hidden bug. Learners could either ask about individual bugs, or make a series of feature queries (e.g., “Does the hidden bug have antenna?”) that could more efficiently narrow the hypothesis space. Critically the task display either helped children integrate evidence with the hypothesis space or required them to perform this operation themselves. Although we found that helping children update their beliefs improved some aspects of their active inquiry behavior, children required to update their own beliefs asked questions that were more context-sensitive and thus informative. The results show how making a task more difficult may actually improve children's active inquiry skills, thus illustrating a type of desirable difficulty.",
keywords = "active inquiry, hypothesis testing, information search, question asking, scientific reasoning",
author = "George Kachergis and Marjorie Rhodes and Todd Gureckis",
note = "Funding Information: Acknowledgments This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation “Varieties of Understanding” grant to TMG and MR. References Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2016 Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2016. All rights reserved.; 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Recognizing and Representing Events, CogSci 2016 ; Conference date: 10-08-2016 Through 13-08-2016",
year = "2016",
language = "English (US)",
series = "Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2016",
publisher = "The Cognitive Science Society",
pages = "2477--2482",
editor = "Anna Papafragou and Daniel Grodner and Daniel Mirman and Trueswell, {John C.}",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2016",
}