{"pk":27745,"title":"Preschoolers are more likely to direct questions to adults than to other children (or selves) during spontaneous conversational acts","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Question asking is a prevalent aspect of children’s speech, pro-\nviding a means by which young learners can rapidly gain infor-\nmation about the world. Although past work demonstrates that\nchildren are sensitive to the knowledge state of potential infor-\nmants (e.g., Koenig & Harris, 2005), less work has explored\nwhether children spontaneously direct questions to adults over\nother children (who are less likely to be knowledgeable), and\nin particular if adult-directed questions focus on content that\nis more likely to support general learning. We recorded in-\ndividual children’s spontaneous speech in 40-minute sessions\nduring their preschool day; for every production we coded\nwhether the speech was directed towards an adult, another\nchild, or was stated to self. Our results (N = 30, totaling 2,232\nutterances) showed that questions took up a greater proportion\nof children’s adult-directed speech as compared to the pro-\nportion of questions in child-directed and self-directed speech.\nFurthermore, although children asked many kinds of questions\n(including conversational clarifications, specific information\nquestions, and questions intended for general learning), chil-\ndren more frequently asked the questions intended for learning\nwhen they spoke to adults than to the other groups. Analysis\nrevealed a developmental effect, with results strongest for the\nolder preschoolers. Our findings suggest that children discrim-\ninately choose ”what” and ”whom” to ask in daily conversa-\ntions, and this ability improves over the course of development.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"question asking"},{"word":"Selective"},{"word":"spontaneous speech"}],"section":"Publication-based-Talks","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0d70j9bq","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Koeun","middle_name":"","last_name":"Choi","name_suffix":"","institution":"Rutgers University","department":""},{"first_name":"Elizabeth","middle_name":"","last_name":"Lapidow","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, San Diego","department":""},{"first_name":"Jennifer","middle_name":"","last_name":"Austin","name_suffix":"","institution":"Rutgers University","department":""},{"first_name":"Patrick","middle_name":"","last_name":"Shafto","name_suffix":"","institution":"Rutgers University","department":""},{"first_name":"Elizabeth","middle_name":"","last_name":"Bonawitz","name_suffix":"","institution":"Rutgers University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2018-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/27745/galley/17385/download/"}]}