Browsing by Author "Choi, Koeun"

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    Antecedents and Consequences of Parent Technology Use in Parents of Young Children
    Devine, Diana Michelle (Virginia Tech, 2024-01-10)
    The availability of and access to technology has been steadily increasing in recent years. Especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, technology use in some form is almost a daily occurrence in the United States (Vargo et al., 2021). A growing body of work has been examining familial technoference, which include interruptions to family interactions due to technology use, and a sub-focus of this research has specifically focused on parent-child relationships and technological interruptions. Using a comprehensive theoretical approach including an update to the process model of parenting (Belsky, 1984; Taraban and Shaw, 2018) and support from both attachment theory (Ainsworth et al., 1978; Bowlby, 1969) and ecological theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1977; Bronfenbrenner and Ceci, 1994), the current research examined the role of technology in parent-child interactions with parents of two-year-old children. In Study 1, constructs of parental technoference were explored in parents of children between 24-26 months of age to evaluate latent factors of parent technology use from 60 indicators and to identify parent and family characteristics that might predict the factors of technology use. A nationally recruited online sample of 323 parents of two-year-old children completed a set of questionnaires online to examine constructs of parental technology use and predictors of those constructs for Study 1. A CFA was conducted to evaluate the model fit of multiple indicators of parent technology use loading onto four predicted latent factors: Problematic Technology Use, Technoference with Child and Family, Social Support through Technology, and Technology Use as Regulation. The hypothesized model had poor fit, and an Exploratory Factor Analysis was conducted. In the final model, only 35 indicators emerged as significant factors to be included in the final model to map onto five latent constructs: Missing Out due to Technology, Problematic Technology Behaviors, Preoccupation with Technology, Positive Parenting through Technology, and Social Support through Technology. The final latent constructs parsed apart the predicted Problematic Technology Use into distinct constructs of thought (Preoccupation with Technology), behavior (Problematic Technology Behaviors), and consequence (Missing Out due to Technology), while items from the predicted Technoference with Child and Family mapped onto the more general Missing Out due to Technology (in various contexts, not just that within the family). Items from the predicted Technology Use as Regulation and Social Support through Technology mapped closely onto the Positive Parenting through Technology and Social Support through Technology constructs, respectively, albeit with fewer significant factor loadings than predicted. Next, predictors of the latent constructs (perceived stress, social support, parenting satisfaction, parenting self-efficacy, and both parent and child effortful control) were examined. SEM was conducted to determine predictors of these constructs of technology use. Perceived stress was a significant predictor of all five latent constructs. Parenting self-efficacy was a significant predictor of Problematic Technology Behaviors, Positive Parenting through Technology, and Social Support through Technology. Parenting satisfaction was a significant predictor of Problematic Technology Behaviors, Preoccupation with Technology, Positive Parenting through Technology, and Social Support through Technology. Social support was not a significant predictor of any latent constructs. Parent self-regulation was a significant predictor of Missing Out due to Technology and Positive Parenting through Technology. Child self-regulation was a significant predictor of Preoccupation with Technology, Positive Parenting through Technology, and Social Support through Technology. These findings demonstrate that there are distinct patterns of parental technology use that are differentially related to parent and family characteristics. This insight into characteristics that are associated with distinct types of technology use can be helpful in the development of targeted intervention for parents seeking to change their technology use behaviors. In Study 2, the impacts of parent technology use on parent behavior during parent-child interactions were examined through a repeated measures analysis of variance (RMANOVA) and Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). In a randomized experimental design, 57 primary caregivers of 30–36-month-old children participated in three 5-minute free play sessions with their child in these conditions: control (no technology), television, and smartphone. Parent engagement with technology was scored in each condition, as well as parental sensitivity and involvement. First, RMANOVAs were conducted to explore differences in proportions of parent involvement with child play by condition and mean differences in parental sensitivity. There were significant differences in proportions of levels of parent involvement by condition; however, there were no differences in mean levels of parent sensitivity by condition. Due to a significant interaction between proportions of levels of involvement and order of condition, an HLM was conducted to control for change over time and isolate influences of condition on parent behavior. When time was controlled, there was significant negative effect of TV and a significant negative effect of smartphones on parental involvement. Overall, the findings from Study 2 demonstrated that caregivers are less involved with child play when technology is present, and especially so when smartphones are involved. Though there was not an overall effect of technology on caregiver sensitivity, further analysis did reveal that caregivers who attended to technology did have lower sensitivity scores than caregivers who did not attend to technology. The findings from this study replicate prior experimental work examining the role of background TV on caregiver-child interactions and extend findings to include the negative effect of smartphones on caregiver-child interactions. Together, the two studies provide further insight into parental technology use, understanding both antecedents and consequences of parent technology use in contribution to the overall knowledge of the mechanisms through which parent technology use relates to parenting and parent-child interactions. The findings from these studies combined can be used to develop targeted interventions for caregivers who are interested in making decisions about technology use within their families that are aligned with healthy developmental outcomes.
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    Bridging the Gap: Early Education on Robot and AI Ethics through the Robot Theater Platform in an Informal Learning Environment
    Mitchell, Jennifer; Dong, Jiayuan; Yu, Shuqi; Harmon, Madison; Holstein, Alethia; Shim, Joon Hyun; Choi, Koeun; Zhu, Qin; Jeon, Myounghoon (ACM, 2024-03-11)
    With the rapid advancement of robotics and AI, educating the next generation on ethical coexistence with these technologies is crucial. Our research explored the potential of a child-robot theater afterschool program in introducing and discussing robot and AI ethics with elementary school children. Conducted with 30 participants from a socioeconomically underprivileged school, the program blended STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) with the arts, focusing on ethical issues in robotics and AI. Using interactive scenarios and a theatrical performance, the program aimed to enhance children’s understanding of major ethical issues in robotics and AI, such as bias, transparency, privacy, usage, and responsibility. Preliminary findings indicate the program’s success in engaging children in meaningful ethical discussions, demonstrating the potential of innovative, interactive educational methods in early education. This study contributes significantly to integrating ethical robotics and AI in early learning, preparing young minds for a technologically advanced and socially responsible future.
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    A child-robot musical theater afterschool program for promoting STEAM education: A case study and guidelines
    Dong, Jia; Choi, Koeun; Yu, Shuqi; Lee, Yeaji; Kim, Jisun; Vajir, Devanshu; Haines, Chelsea; Newbill, Phyllis; Wyatt, Ariana; Upthegrove, Tanner; Jeon, Myounghoon (Taylor & Francis, 2023-03-16)
    With the advancements of machine learning and AI technologies, robots have been more widely used in our everyday life and they have also been used in education. The present study introduces a 12-week child-robot theater afterschool program designed to promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education with art elements (STEAM) for elementary students using social robots. Four modules were designed to introduce robot mechanisms as well as arts: Acting (anthropomorphism), Dance (robot movements), Music and Sounds (music composition), and Drawing (robot art). These modules provided children with basic knowledge about robotics and STEM and guided children to create a live robot theater play. A total of 16 students participated in the program, and 11 of them were involved in completing questionnaires and interviews regarding their perceptions towards robots, STEAM, and the afterschool program. Four afterschool program teachers participated in interviews, reflecting their perceptions of the program and observations of children’s experiences during the program. Our findings suggest that the present program effectively maintained children’s engagement and improved their interest in STEAM by connecting social robots and theater production. We conclude with design guidelines and recommendations for future research and programs.
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    Does Temperament Differentially Influence Study Completion Rates for 18 and 24-Month-Olds Participating in a Remote Study?
    Taylor, Caroline Hamilton (Virginia Tech, 2023-06-26)
    Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many researchers turned to remote testing to continue to collect data. This shift provided new insights and exciting opportunities for researchers, including the ability to gain access to larger demographic pools. However, remote work has come with unique challenges. One factor that has proved to be challenging is the level of control researchers have when conducting remote studies. For example, compared to in-lab room setup and design, participants' home environments have numerous distractions for young toddlers (e.g., family members, pets, tv, toys). Thus, the increased variability has led to important questions regarding methodology, implementation, and in the current study, variability in participation. That is, are there systematic biases in final samples due to differences in participant characteristics, such as temperament? Particularly for remote work, the increased variability has created challenges for researchers to collect data but also exciting opportunities to understand how temperament may interact with participation and study completion rates. The current study aimed to understand whether temperament plays a role in study completion rates in remote research for toddlers ages 18 and 24 months. It was expected that effortful control would significantly influence participation and study completion, and that both negative affectivity and surgency would negatively influence participation in the remote study. Both effortful control and negative affectivity were not significantly related to participation, while surgency positively related to participation.
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    Dose-Response Effects of Working Memory Training Among Adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes
    Mansoor, Marrium (Virginia Tech, 2023-02)
    Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a chronic disease that is due to the dysregulation of glucose in the blood when insulin is not made endogenously. Patients rely on a combination of exogenic insulin, medications, blood glucose monitoring, and healthy lifestyle activities such as dietary control and exercise to manage their blood glucose levels. T1D typically begins its onset during childhood or adolescence, where it may also affect the development of executive function (EF) processes which are also relevant for self-regulation, or goal-directed behavior. This in turn may affect individuals’ adherence to their T1D management regimens, which can result in severe short- and long-term complications. Despite evidence for the plasticity of EF during childhood, previous research has not frequently focused on EF or self-regulation (SR) as a possible mechanism for improving health outcomes in adolescents with T1D. This study focused on the dosage of EF training and its possible effects on both cognitive and health outcomes for 47 adolescents (M= 15.4, SD =1.45) with T1D undergoing a larger adherence intervention. EF was measured by the Digit Span and Go/No-Go tests, while composite measures of T1D treatment adherence were aggregated via separate parent and adolescent reports. It was hypothesized that both cognitive measures and treatment adherence would have a dose-dependent relationship with n-back training. However, no association was found between training dosage and EF outcomes or treatment adherence. The study’s limitations include a relatively small sample size along with low participant compliance for the EF training. It also might be that the relationship between EF, SR, and health behaviors is more nuanced than previously suggested and that there are a variety of reasons why dosage of training was not linked to differential outcomes. As such, further investigation is required to better understand this relationship in the search for effective interventions for health behavior.
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    Emotion Regulation and Screen Use among Parents of Toddlers: A Moderating Role of Parental Personality
    Gurdal, Mahmut Sami (Virginia Tech, 2024-05)
    Despite the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (2016) recommendation to limit screen exposure in the early years, toddlers’ screen use exceeds these guidelines (Rideout & Robb, 2020). Given the significant role of parental media use in children’s exposure to screens (Domoff et al., 2020; Lauricella et al., 2015), it is important to understand the factors that contribute to parental screen use. Digital technologies have been posited as tools for emotion regulation (Wadley et al., 2020), suggesting that parental emotion regulation may serve as a significant determinant of parental media use. Prior studies have shown the association between emotion regulation strategies and different types of screen use, including non-interactive and interactive media (Extremera et al., 2019; Rozgonjuk & Elhai, 2021). It has also been suggested that the role of emotion regulations strategies may differ by personality traits (Gross & John, 2003). However, limited research to date examined these associations with the focus on parents of toddlers. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the association between parents’ emotion regulation strategies on their screen use and the moderating role of personality traits in this association. This study used secondary data collected from an online survey of 296 mothers of children between 18 to 36 months in the United States. Linear regression models were fitted to examine the association between emotion regulation strategies and parental screen use, with a focus on two specific regulation strategies and interactive and non-interactive screen use. They were founded that cognitive reappraisal was not related either non-interactive and interactive screen uses and that expressive suppression was only associated with non-interactive screen use. Cognitive reappraisal was related to agreeableness and expressive suppression was related to extraversion. No moderator roles of agreeableness on the association between cognitive reappraisal and both types of screen use and extraversion on the association between expressive suppression and both types of screen use were found. Future research is needed to test the possible biases resulting from the self-report technique, understand the causation between emotion regulation strategies and screen use, and include the context of screen media for deeper understanding.
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    An Exploratory Study of Involving Parents in E-book Joint Reading with Voice Agents
    Vargas Diaz, Daniel Alfredo (Virginia Tech, 2024-06-06)
    Parent-child interactions during joint reading play an important role in young children's cognitive and language development. However, contemporary digital book formats---such as e-books or audiobooks---often overlook the role of the parent in reading the text, by either dubbing voice narration over it or reading it aloud automatically. With the advancement and prevalence of voice-based conversational artificial intelligence (AI) agents, AI reading an e-book emerges as a novel reading experience, yet reducing the role of parents in the reading process similarly. When the reading experience becomes less of a joint activity between children and parents, the potential benefits children can gain from reading may diminish. In this study involving 11 parent-child pairs, we aimed to explore how voice agents (VAs) could be used to create an interactive digital space to 1) promote parental engagement in joint e-book reading with children and 2) enhance parents' and children's joint reading experiences. We developed and evaluated TaleMate, an interactive joint reading app that allows parents and children ages 3-6 years to assign different AI voices to the characters from a book while enabling parents to embody one of the characters to read the book with the voice agents. We found that the system supported children's engagement and story comprehension. Parents reported that they found value in the interactivity of the system and enjoyed a participatory, joint reading experience, where both they and their children could choose which characters to embody. These findings offer insights into design considerations for researchers interested in developing applications that facilitate collaborative reading experiences involving parents, children, and voice agents.
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    Family Processes in Family Group Chats
    Resor, Jessica M. (Virginia Tech, 2021-09-28)
    Family group chats are a popular form of technology-mediated communication. Family group chats represent an understudied area of family communication. In this qualitative multi-method study, I aimed to investigate how and why families use family group chats and how family processes are enacted within them. This grounded theory study was informed by family systems theory and uses and gratifications theory. Families participated in multi family member group interviews and were invited to submit the last one-month's history of their family group chat. Forty-nine participants from thirteen families across the United States participated in this study. I identified four themes from the data: (1) entering the chat, (2) growing and aging with the group chat, (3) accepting terms and conditions, and (4) holding the invisible string. I present a theoretical explanation of how these themes interact. Family group chats held a significant place in family life that extended family members' availability to one another and kept them in near constant contact, even when they were separated by geographic distance. I propose the possibility of family group chats as a protective factor to increase family functioning. This research generates future directions for the field and has implications for families, professionals who work with families, and group chat application developers. It provides one of the earliest investigations into family group chats from a family science perspective.
  • Interactive stories through robot musical theater for preschoolers’ STEAM education
    Choi, Koeun; Yu, Shuqi; Kim, Jisun; Dong, Jia; Lee, Yeaji; Haines, Chelsea; Newbill, Phyllis; Upthegrove, Tanner; Wyatt, Ariana; Jeon, Myonghoon (2022)
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    Maternal Socialization and Anti-racism Mothering: A Grounded Theory
    Beers, Candy Lynn (Virginia Tech, 2023-05-19)
    White mothers have historically felt exempt from discussing race and racism with their children and have placed this added emotional labor onto mothers of color (Depouw and Matias, 2016; Priest et al., 2014). Budding anti-racism scholarship has begun to examine why well-intending white parents report an interest in engaging in anti-racism but fail to follow-through (Aanerud, 2007; Allen, 2017; Comeau, 2007; Depouw and Matias, 2016; Gillen-O'Neel et al., 2021; Hagerman, 2014, 2018; Matlock and DiAngelo, 2015; Priest et al., 2014; Vittrup, 2016; Zucker and Patterson, 2018). While this body of literature has highlighted important missteps and shortcomings of white families' engagement in anti-racism, examining how maternal socialization, within the current intensive mothering (IM) paradigm (Hays, 1996), informs the integration of anti-racism has yet to be considered. Guided by symbolic interactionism and feminist theories and methodology, this study functions to answer the following research questions: (1) How might, if at all, race, gender, and class socialization inform affluent white mothers' adoption of IM? (2) What is the process of affluent white mothers challenging or adopting IM to incorporate anti-racism into their maternal identity and mothering practices? and (3) What are the perceived barriers or motivators, if any, to affluent white mothers' integration of anti-racism within the current IM paradigm? Data from 18 semi-structured, virtual individual interviews with affluent white mothers, post-interview survey questions, and follow-up member checking interview questions derived from coded transcripts were analyzed using constructivist grounded theory. Findings indicate that affluent white mothers who endorse interest in engaging in anti-racism within the context of IM report several tensions within the process of integrating anti-racism into their existing maternal identity. Foundational to each of these tensions is internalized white supremacy and gender ideologies that surface in striving to excel at both IM and anti-racism. While tenets of IM (i.e., all-consuming; labor intensive) and white supremacy (i.e., perfectionism; bigger is better; either/or thinking) presented as perceived barriers toward integration of anti-racism into maternal identity, some tenets of IM (i.e., optimal child outcomes; professionally informed) were named as motivation for this sample to incorporate anti-racism into their maternal identity and daily practice. Aligning with optimal child outcomes and professionally-informed mothering, two points of intervention were named, creating space for the development and assessment of future interventions aimed to increase the presence of anti- racism within white mothering.
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    Multisensory Integration in Early Toddlerhood: Interrelationships with Context, SES and Expressive Vocabulary
    Taylor, Caroline (Virginia Tech, 2021)
    In the everyday environment, we receive information from various sensory inputs, and yet, we perceive and integrate the incoming information in a way that is meaningful. Remarkably, infants and toddlers are capable of sensory integration early in life. By integrating information, particularly speech, infants ultimately learn to reproduce language by late toddlerhood. These language skills form a foundation for learning and achievement later in life, and there is documented evidence that language skills vary by experiences related to socioeconomic status (SES). Language disparities can be measured early in development, and continue to divide throughout childhood. Although there is clear evidence that language learning trajectories are influenced by SES, less is known about multisensory integration (MSI) as they are measured here and how these skills may differ as a function of SES. Here, MSI was investigated to gain insight into the potential changes that occur in MSI and expressive vocabulary for 68 toddlers between 18 months and 24-months. Finally, this relationship was investigated in the context of SES. At 18-months, toddlers demonstrated significant matching for nonsocial conditions, and at 24-months toddlers also matched for low competition social trials, thus demonstrating an improvement in matching from 18 to 24-months. There were no significant relationships between MSI and expressive vocabulary, and only one unexpected relationship between MSI and SES. These findings extend the research from Bahrick and colleagues (2018) by supplementing the previously studied 12-month-olds and 2-5-year-olds with an earlier age (e.g., 18-months), and open new doors for studying toddlers’ emerging social MSI.
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    Preschoolers' Mathematical Language Learning during Book Reading with an AI Voice Agent
    Kim, Jisun (Virginia Tech, 2024-08-06)
    Digital media technologies have been extensively utilized in children's daily lives and many researchers, educators, caregivers, and developers have been interested in finding ways to utilize these technologies in educational settings to facilitate early cognitive development. Among a wide range of media technologies, the accessibility of voice assistants and smart speakers powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) has notably increased. However, there is a paucity of knowledge about how this advanced technology can be used to teach young children important mathematical concepts during shared book reading. The current study aimed to examine whether and under what circumstances shared book reading with an AI voice agent would enhance preschool-aged children's learning of mathematical language, a critical domain-specific language highly associated with early numeracy skills and vocabulary development. Sixty-six participants who were recruited for home-visit and school-visit sessions were randomly assigned to one of three reading conditions to read a storybook with the AI voice agent three times: math storybook reading with dialogic questions, math storybook reading without dialogic questions, and non-math storybook reading with dialogic questions. The findings indicate that shared math storybook reading supports children's target mathematical language learning differently based on their initial understanding of numeracy skills. Children with higher levels of numeracy skills demonstrated greater benefits from simply listening to the story, whereas children with lower levels of numeracy skills showed a tendency to learn better when hearing questions and feedback from the AI voice agent. This study provides implications for the use of advanced technology involving social interaction to support children's learning of key mathematical language that can benefit from repeated reading.
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    Preschoolers’ attention to and learning from on-screen characters that vary by effort and efficiency: An eye-tracking study
    Choi, Koeun; Schlesinger, Molly A.; Franchak, John M.; Richert, Rebekah A. (Frontiers, 2022-12-15)
    Prior findings are mixed regarding the extent to which children understand others’ effort in early childhood. Especially, little is known about how character effort impacts children’s selective attention and learning. This study examined preschoolers’ visual attention to and learning from two on-screen characters: One character exerting high effort with low efficiency and another character exerting low effort with high efficiency in solving problems successfully. Children between 3.5 and 6.5 years of age (N = 70) watched a video of the two on-screen characters successfully solving problems. Children’s eye movements were recorded during viewing. Each of the two on-screen characters consistently displayed either high effort/low efficiency or low effort/high efficiency to solve four problems (familiarization). For the final problem (testing), the two characters exerted the same level of effort as each other and used unique solutions to solve the problem. Children then solved the final problem themselves using real objects. Children could selectively use either character’s solution demonstrated in the video. Lastly, children explicitly judged how good the characters were at solving problems. Younger children were more likely to use the solution demonstrated by the character with high effort/low efficiency, whereas older children were more likely to use the solution provided by another character with low effort/high efficiency. Younger children allocated more attention to the high effort/low efficiency character than the low effort/high efficiency character, but this pattern was modified by age such that children’s gaze to the low effort/high efficiency character increased with age. Children’s explicit credibility judgments did not differ by character or child age. The findings are discussed with respect to preschoolers’ understanding of effort and implications for children’s learning from screen media.
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    TaleMate: Collaborating with Voice Agents for Parent-Child Joint Reading Experiences
    Vargas-Diaz, Daniel; Karunaratna, Sulakna; Kim, Jisun; Lee, Sang Won; Choi, Koeun (ACM, 2023-10-29)
    Joint reading is a key activity for early learners, with caregiver-child interactions such as questioning and feedback playing an essential role in children’s cognitive and linguistic development. However, for some parents, actively engaging children in storytelling can be challenging. To address this, we introduce TaleMate—a platform designed to enhance shared reading by leveraging conversational agents that have been shown to support children’s engagement and learning. TaleMate enables a dynamic, participatory reading experience where parents and children can choose which characters they wish to embody. Moreover, the system navigates the challenges posed by digital reading tools, such as decreased parent-child interaction, and builds upon the benefits of traditional and digital reading techniques. TaleMate offers an innovative approach to fostering early reading habits, bridging the gap between traditional joint reading practices and the digital reading landscape.
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    Touchscreens for Whom? Working Memory and Age Moderate the Impact of Contingency on Toddlers' Transfer From Video
    Choi, Koeun; Kirkorian, Heather L.; Pempek, Tiffany A. (2021-02-24)
    Toddlers exhibit poor transfer between video and real-world contexts. Contingently responsive video such as that found in touchscreen apps appears to assist transfer for some toddlers but not others. This study investigated the extent to which toddlers' working memory moderates the impact of contingency on toddler's transfer of learning from video. Toddlers (24-36 months; N = 134) watched a hiding event on either (a) contingent video that advanced only after touch input or (b) non-contingent video that proceeded automatically. Toddlers then searched for a corresponding object on a felt board. Additionally, toddlers' working memory (WM) was assessed. Findings indicate WM and age moderated the impact of contingency on transfer: Contingency decreased transfer in younger children while increasing transfer among older children. However, this was only true for children with relatively low WM. Contingency had little impact on transfer among children with relatively high WM, regardless of age. Results from this study suggest that WM is one specific moderator that predicts whether toddlers are likely to learn from contingent vs. non-contingent video, yet WM does not operate in isolation. Together, these findings underscore the importance of considering multiple child characteristics when identifying the optimal conditions for toddlers' learning from symbolic media.
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    Young Children’s Directed Question Asking in Preschool Classrooms
    Wong, Michelle; Choi, Koeun; Barak, Libby; Lapidow, Elizabeth; Austin, Jennifer; Shafto, Patrick; Bonawitz, Elizabeth (MDPI, 2024-08-27)
    Question asking is a prevalent aspect of children’s speech, providing a means by which young learners can rapidly gain information about the world. Previous research has demonstrated that children exhibit sensitivity to the knowledge state of potential informants in laboratory settings. However, it remains unclear whether and how young children are inclined to direct questions that support learning deeper content to more knowledgeable informants in naturalistic classroom contexts. In this study, we examined children’s question-asking targets (adults, other preschoolers, self-talk) during an open-play period in a US preschool classroom and assessed how the cognitive and linguistic characteristics of questions varied as a function of the intended recipient. Further, we examined how these patterns changed with age. We recorded the spontaneous speech of individual children between the ages of 3 and 6 years (N = 30, totaling 2875 utterances) in 40-min open-period sessions in their preschool day, noting whether the speech was directed toward an adult, another child, or was stated to self. We publish this fully transcribed database with contextual and linguistic details coded as open access to all future researchers. We found that questions accounted for a greater proportion of preschoolers’ adult-directed speech than of their child-directed and self-directed speech, with a particular increase in questions that supported broader learning goals when directed to an adult. Younger children directed a higher proportion of learning questions to adults than themselves, whereas older children asked similar proportions of questions to both, suggesting a difference in younger and older children’s question-asking strategies. Although children used greater lexical diversity in questions than in other utterances, their question formulation in terms of length and diversity remained consistent across age and recipient types, reflecting their general linguistic abilities. Our findings reveal that children discriminately choose “what” and “whom” to ask in daily spontaneous conversations. Even in less-structured school contexts, preschoolers direct questions to the informant most likely to be able to provide an adequate answer.