How does Google get its information?: Children's judgements about Google search.

Children frequently use Google to answer their questions, yet what they think about Google's capacity and limitations is unclear. This study explores children's beliefs about Google's capacity to answer questions. American children ages 9 and 10 (n = 44; 18 boys and 26 girls) viewed factual questions directed towards Google or a person. After viewing each question, they reported their confidence in the informant's accuracy, the time it would take the informant to obtain the answer and how the informant would obtain the answer. Finally, they generated questions that the internet would be capable or incapable of answering. Children believed Google would be more accurate and faster than a person at answering questions. Children consistently generated appropriate questions that the internet would be good at answering, but they sometimes struggled to generate questions that the internet would not be good at answering. Implications for children's learning are discussed.

Children's interactions with virtual assistants: Moving beyond depictions of social agents.

Clark and Fischer argue that people see social robots as depictions of social agents. However, people's interactions with virtual assistants may change their beliefs about social robots. Children and adults with exposure to virtual assistants may view social robots not as depictions of social agents, but as social agents belonging to a unique ontological category.

Children's trust in and learning from voice assistants.

As children increasingly interact with digital voice assistants, it is important to know whether they treat these devices as reliable information sources. Two studies investigated children's trust in and recall of statements made by a novel voice assistant and a human informant. In Study 1, children ages 4-5 (Mage = 5.05; 20 boys, 20 girls) and 7-8 (Mage = 7.98; 18 boys, 22 girls) from predominately White, upper middle-class families heard each informant respond to questions from multiple categories. With increasing age, children showed greater trust in the voice assistant for factual information and greater trust in the human for personal information about the experimenter identified as her friend. Endorsement of each informant's statements also predicted later recall. In Study 2, children ages 4-5 (Mage = 5.00; 20 boys, 20 girls) and 7-8 (Mage = 8.03; 19 boys, 21 girls) from predominately White, upper middle-class families chose whether to seek out information from a voice assistant or human informant. With increasing age, children showed an increasing preference to seek factual information from the voice assistant and an increasing preference to seek personal information from the human. Additionally, children's preferences were not related to attributions of epistemic capacities to each informant nor the presence of a voice assistant in children's homes. These results suggest that children's trust in voice assistants varies with age and depends on the type of information involved. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).