Preschoolers search longer when there is more information to be gained

What drives human search in situations with sparse rewards? We let preschoolers (age 24-52 months)play a game in which they had to search for an animal and measured their persistence in the absence ofexplicit rewards. Crucially, we either told children which animal they were searching for (known animalcondition), so that they gained no additional information when finding it, or we told them that it could beone out of eight different animals (unknown animal condition), so that they gained additional informationwhen finding it. Although none of the children could actually find an animal, no matter how long theysearched, our results indicate that the unknown animal group was more persistent in their search. Theseresults enrich our understanding of children’s motivation in scenarios with sparse rewards and informresearch on artificially intelligent agents facing similar environments