AI Pre-Literacy Research Observatory
Early Childhood and AI: Evidence Map
A searchable evidence map for research on young children’s encounters with artificial intelligence and related intelligent agents.
Evidence Map
Search and filter the research landscape. Select See Analytical Review for the detailed study record.
| Study | Year | Age | Technology / agent | Developmental phenomenon | Relationship | Layer | Status |
|---|
About the Evidence Map
The Observatory is designed as evidence infrastructure rather than a conventional bibliography. Existing research retains its original terminology and theoretical identity. The proposed AI pre-literacy domain is introduced only at the synthesis level as a provisional organizing domain.
Three-Layer Analytical Boundary
These layers are analytical categories, not developmental stages or hierarchical levels.
Methodological Position
The evidence map uses a broad, multi-concept discovery search and a structured verification process. Peer-reviewed empirical research forms the principal primary evidence set; contextual, emerging, duplicate, excluded, and unresolved records are kept analytically distinct. The Observatory does not treat all social robots as AI, and school grade is not used as a proxy for chronological age.
Goldman, Baumann, & Poulin-Dubois
Full Reference + DOI
Goldman, Baumann, & Poulin-Dubois. Preschoolers’ anthropomorphizing of robots: Do human-like properties matter?.
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1102370
Relationship to AI pre-literacy
Adjacent intelligent-agent/social-robot
The study investigates children’s interpretations of a humanoid artificial agent. Although the evidence is highly relevant to the developmental territory proposed for AI pre-literacy, it should not automatically be treated as evidence of children’s understanding of AI. Its relevance lies primarily in the developmental processes through which children interpret and attribute psychological properties to artificial agents.
Analytical layer
Layer 1 — Core Developmental Territory
Mental-state attribution / agency attribution
Layer 2 — Developmental Extension
Anthropomorphism and interpretation of the agent’s social and psychological properties
Key contribution
The study provides empirical evidence concerning young children’s attribution of mental or psychological properties to a humanoid artificial agent. It is relevant to AI pre-literacy because such interpretations may form part of children’s emerging relationship with artificial intelligence and related intelligent agents.
What this study does NOT establish
The study does not establish that children possess a developed concept of artificial intelligence, nor does it validate AI pre-literacy as a developmental construct. Its contribution is more specific: it illuminates children’s developing interpretation of an artificial agent and therefore contributes to the broader developmental territory from which the proposed AI pre-literacy domain may be constructed.
Evidence status
INCLUDED — PRIMARY EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE
Evidence-map classification
Young children → Artificial agent → Mental-state attribution → Anthropomorphism / agency → Layer 1/2