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Abstract What maximizes instructional impact in early childhood? We propose a simple intervention employing “Pedagogical Questions”. We explore whether swapping some instructional language with questions in psychosomatic storybooks improves preschoolers’ memory, learning, and generalization. Seventy-two preschoolers were randomly assigned to one of three conditions and were read storybooks employing eitherDirect Instruction,Pedagogical Questions, orControlcontent. Posttest measures of psychosomatic understanding, judgments about the possibility of psychosomatic events, and memory for storybook details showed that children in thePedagogical Questionscondition demonstrated greater memory for relevant storybook details and improved psychosomatic understanding. Our results suggest that pedagogical questions are a relatively simple educational manipulation to improve memory, learning, and transfer of theory-rich content. 

Abstract Burgeoning evidence suggests that when children observe data, they use knowledge of the demonstrator's intent to augment learning. We propose that the effects of social learning may go beyond cases where children observe data, to cases where they receive no new information at all. We present a model of how simply asking a question a second time may lead to belief revision, when the questioner is expected to know the correct answer. We provide an analysis of the CHILDES corpus to show that these neutral follow‐up questions are used in parent–child conversations. We then present three experiments investigating 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children's reactions to neutral follow‐up questions posed by ignorant or knowledgeable questioners. Children were more likely to change their answers in response to a neutral follow‐up question from a knowledgeable questioner than an ignorant one. We discuss the implications of these results in the context of common practices in legal, educational, and experimental psychological settings. 

Abstract How can education optimize transmission of knowledge while also fostering further learning? Focusing on children at the cusp of formal schooling (N= 180, age = 4.0–6.0 y), we investigate learning after direct instruction by a knowledgeable teacher, after questioning by a knowledgeable teacher, and after questioning by a naïve informant. Consistent with previous findings, instruction by a knowledgeable teacher allows effective information transmission but at the cost of exploration and further learning. Critically, we find a dual benefit for questioning by a knowledgeable teacher: Suchpedagogical questioningboth effectively transmits knowledge and fosters exploration and further learning, regardless of whether the question was directed to the child or directed to a third party and overheard by the child. These effects are not observed when the same question is asked by a naïve informant. We conclude that a teacher's choice of pedagogical method may differentially influence learning through their choices of how, and how not, to present evidence, with implications for transmission of knowledge and self‐directed discovery. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJXH2b65wL8 

In studies involving human subjects, voluntary participation may lead to sampling bias, thus limiting the generalizability of findings. This effect may be especially pronounced in developmental studies, where parents serve as both the primary environmental input and decision maker of whether their child participates in a study. We present a novel empirical and modeling approach to estimate how parental consent may bias measurements of children’s behavior. Specifically, we coupled naturalistic observations of parent–child interactions in public spaces with a behavioral test with children, and used modeling methods to impute the behavior of children who did not participate. Results showed that parents’ tendency to use questions to teach was associated with both children’s behavior in the test and parents’ tendency to participate. Exploiting these associations with a model-based multiple imputation and a propensity score–matching procedure, we estimated that the means of the participating and not-participating groups could differ as much as 0.23 standard deviations for the test measurements, and standard deviations themselves are likely underestimated. These results suggest that ignoring factors associated with consent may lead to systematic biases when generalizing beyond lab samples, and the proposed general approach provides a way to estimate these biases in future research.