Can you teach me how to open the box?: Examining young children’s teaching behavior toward adults with and without disabilities

This study examined how children (31–71 months; N = 85) adjusted their teaching behaviors with three learners, each posing different communicative challenges, in comparison to a control learner, who showed no communicative challenge. With a Disabled learner, children showed fewer explicit teaching behaviors, and more eye contact with their parents and/or the primary experimenter as compared to when teaching a Control learner. With a Tired learner who followed identical scripted actions as the Disabled learner, children’s overall rate of teaching behaviors was largely unchanged. With a Spanish Speaking learner, children spoke less frequently but showed more frequent eye contact with the learner. These results demonstrate that while preschool children can modify their teaching strategies to adapt to the needs of different learners, they appear to teach less effectively and show markers of uncertainty when teaching to learners with disabilities. •Preschoolers adjust their communication when teaching different adults.•While making communicative adjustments, preschoolers may be relatively ineffective.•Preschoolers increased eye contact to a parent/experimenter and decreased explicit teaching with a learner with a disability.•Understanding development of teaching to learners with different identities in larger groups and older children is important.