Children’s sensitivity to automatic behavior relates to pedagogical reasoning and Theory of Mind

Pedagogy is a powerful way to learn about the world, and young children are adept at both learning from teaching and teaching others themselves. Theoretical accounts of pedagogical reasoning suggest that an important aspect of being an effective teacher is considering what learners need to know, as misconceptions about learners’ beliefs, needs, or goals can result in less helpful teaching. One underexplored way in which teachers may fail to represent what learners know is by simply “going through the motions” of teaching, without actively engaging with the learner’s beliefs, needs, and goals at all. In the current paper, we replicate ongoing work that suggests children are sensitive to when others are relying on automatic scripts in the context of teaching. We then look at the potential link to two related measures. First, we hypothesize that sensitivity to a teacher’s perceived automaticity will be linked to classic measures of pedagogical sensitivity and learning – specifically, how children explore and learn about novel toys following pedagogical versus non-pedagogical demonstrations. Second, we hypothesize that the development of Theory of Mind (and age differences more broadly) relate to these pedagogical sensitivities. Our online adaptation of the novel toy exploration task did not invoke pedagogical reasoning as expected, and so we do not find robust links between these tasks. We do find that Theory of Mind predicts children’s ability to detect automaticity in teaching when controlling for age. This work thus highlights the connections between sensitivity to teaching and reasoning about others’ knowledge, with implications for the factors that support children’s ability to teach others.