Direct and indirect admission of ignorance by children Daniela Kloo a,b,⇑ , Michael Rohwer a , Josef Perner a a Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria b Department of Developmental Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilian-University, Munich Leopoldstr. 13, D-80802 München, Germany article info Article history: Received 6 May 2016 Revised 28 February 2017 Keywords: Metacognition Ignorance Uncertainty Opt-out Children Information-seeking abstract Research has shown that children are able to admit their own igno- rance directly (i.e., verbally) by 3 years of age when they are totally ignorant about what is hidden in a box (total ignorance task) but fail to do so until 5 or 6 years of age when having seen different objects without seeing which of them is being hidden (partial exposure task). This study investigated whether an earlier under- standing of own ignorance in the partial exposure task is found when using an indirect measure—when children are allowed to either opt out from a risky decision (Experiment 1) or seek clarify- ing information by peeking inside (Experiment 2). No evidence for an earlier understanding was found in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, however, 3- and 4-year-olds searched for clarifying information under partial exposure more often when being igno- rant than when being knowledgeable. We argue that this discrep- ancy is related to whether spontaneous information seeking involves metacognitive processes or not. Ó 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Introduction Metacognition is commonly defined as cognition about cognition or, in everyday parlance, thinking about thinking (Dunlosky & Metcalfe, 2009; Flavell, 1979). In developmental psychology, it was first http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.02.014 0022-0965/Ó 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Developmental Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilian-University, Munich Leopoldstr. 13, D-80802 München, Germany. Fax: +43 662 8044 5126. E-mail address: daniela.kloo@sbg.ac.at (D. Kloo). Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 159 (2017) 279–295 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Experimental Child Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jecp