Desirable difficulties in the development of active inquiry skills

George Kachergis, Marjorie Rhodes, Todd Gureckis

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

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.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2016
EditorsAnna Papafragou, Daniel Grodner, Daniel Mirman, John C. Trueswell
PublisherThe Cognitive Science Society
Pages2477-2482
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9780991196739
StatePublished - 2016
Event38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Recognizing and Representing Events, CogSci 2016 - Philadelphia, United States
Duration: Aug 10 2016Aug 13 2016

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2016

Conference

Conference38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Recognizing and Representing Events, CogSci 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPhiladelphia
Period8/10/168/13/16

Keywords

  • active inquiry
  • hypothesis testing
  • information search
  • question asking
  • scientific reasoning

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

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