The development of social offloading

Abstract

Across two experiments, we explored the conditions under which 4- to 11-year-old children (N = 138) were more likely to seek social cognitive helpers and whether they preferentially relied on help from those that had previously shown proficiency in a relevant cognitive context. Children completed a memory task with varying levels of difficulty, after which they were introduced to two characters that exhibited either a high memory ability (task-relevant) or a high motor skill ability (task-irrelevant) in a distinct context. Children then completed the memory task a second time with the option to choose one of the two characters to assist them. From 6 years of age, children preferentially offloaded memory demand onto the character that had previously demonstrated a high memory ability and were also more likely to ask for help on difficult trials compared with easy trials. Our results also indicated potential differences in factors influencing children’s social and nonsocial cognitive offloading decisions.