Weighing Relationship Type and Competence: Developmental Shift in Help-Seeking Expectations Among Children Aged 4 to 6 Years

Young children must determine from whom to seek help, yet little is known about how they weigh different social cues when forming help-seeking expectations and how such weighting shift during preschool years. The present research examined how children aged 4 to 6 years integrated relationship type (mother vs. unfamiliar adult) and competence cues in a third-party prediction task. In Study 1 (N = 194), 4-year-olds expected help-seekers to turn to mothers regardless of competence, whereas 5- and 6-year-olds increasingly incorporated competence in predicting both mothers and unfamiliar adults. In Study 2 (N = 106), 5- and 6-year-olds preferred competent unfamiliar adults over incompetent mothers, while 4-year-olds showed no clear preference. These findings reveal a developmental shift from reliance on relationship type to growing sensitivity to competence, providing support for the developmental relationship primacy hypothesis. More broadly, the results highlight how young children flexibly integrate multiple social cues in help-seeking contexts, underscoring the dynamic and context-sensitive nature of attachment representations as developing social-cognitive systems.