Children's Preference for Teacher Explanations 

Children look to adults for answers. When learning from others, they prefer full explanations that provide context and clarification. However, adults often provide different forms of explanations to children's questions, such as pedagogical question-as-answer responses ("Why do you think so?") and authoritarian responses ("Because I said so"). This study asks whether children attribute knowledge and/or social power differently to teachers who provide a full explanation to a student’s question compared to a teacher who does not provide a full explanation. This study also investigates whether children attribute knowledge and/or social power differently to teachers who provide “question-as-answer” responses or “because I said so” responses in the absence of full explanation responses.

4 to 8-year-old children will watch videos of a student asking questions to a teacher. The teacher either responds with a full explanation, a "question-as-answer" response, or a "because I said so" response. Children will then be asked some questions to test their preference for each teacher.