Preschoolers use intentional and pedagogical cues to guide inductive inferences and exploration. Child Dev. 83, 1416–1428. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01775.x Cameron-Faulkner

Children are judicious social learners. They may be particularly sensitive to communicative actions done pedagogically for their benefit, as such actions may mark important, generalizable information. Three experi-ments (N = 224) found striking differences in preschoolers ’ inductive generalization and exploration of a novel functional property, depending on whether identical evidence for the property was produced acciden-tally, intentionally, or pedagogically and communicatively. Results also revealed that although 4-year-olds reserved strong generalizations for a property that is pedagogically demonstrated, 3-year-olds made such inferences when it was produced either intentionally or pedagogically. These findings suggest that by age 4 children assess whether evidence is produced for their benefit in gauging generalizability, giving them a pow-erful tool for acquiring important kind-relevant, generic knowledge. A fundamental aspect of human cognition is our ability to learn from and teach others. Our ability to read others ’ intentions and engage in collaborative learning may provide the foundation for human culture, from law and government to industry and education (Gergely & Csibra, 2005; Tomasello, 1999). Children’s understanding of intentions is inherent to many domains, including word learnin