The Princess and Thief Treasure Hunt

For 5- to 7-year-olds

This study will take place on a Zoom video call, live with a researcher! Clicking on the “Participate Now!” button will send you to an online calendar where you can select a date and time that works for you. In this study, children will make decisions between getting information and getting reward. Children will follow an interactive story of a kind Princess who likes to give them coins and a mean Thief who doesn't like to give them any coins in the game. They will be asked to make decisions about the characters in the game. There is no right answer.

This study investigates how children weigh information and reward in different environments, which is an important question for understanding how they actively learn and explore in their everyday lives. Previous research found that young children are exploratory information seekers (and in some cases even more so than adults); here we study how different environments might affect how much children want to get information versus reward.

15 minutes

Participants will receive a $5 Amazon gift card and a certificate of completion signed by Dr. Alison Gopnik after the study! Only one gift card will be rewarded per participant. The child participant must belong to the suitable age range of the study and must be visible in consent video as well as the entire experiment.