# Children’s Question-Asking with Voice Assistants

How answer informativeness and parents’ beliefs relate to the questions children ask.

Burcu Ünlütabak, Büşra Sarıkaya Güven, Onur Bal, Zeynep Gedikoğlu

2026 · Preprint · SSRN

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.7091011

## Overview

This study asked whether children change what they ask a voice assistant when its answers provide more or less information. It also examined whether parents’ beliefs about child-rearing were associated with the kinds of questions children asked.

## How we ran the study

The study involved 47 Turkish-speaking children from 5 years 4 months to 8 years 7 months old. Each child completed a question-asking task in both the informative and non-informative conditions. An experimenter used a Wizard-of-Oz interface to select prepared answers during the conversation. The setup let the researchers vary the information in the answer under controlled conditions.

## What we found

Children asked 1,055 questions in the informative condition and 623 in the non-informative condition. They asked proportionally more explanation-seeking questions with informative answers and more questions about labels or identities with non-informative answers.

In the informative condition, stronger parental beliefs in children’s autonomy were associated with more explanation-seeking and less fact-seeking. These links were correlational. The authors note that the small sample and the low reliability of some parenting measures limit what can be inferred from the associations.

## Research contributions

Burcu Ünlütabak led the wider [TÜBİTAK 3501 project](/research/child-inquiry-project.md). Onur Bal contributed to study design, data collection, coding, analysis, and the experiment software. Büşra Sarıkaya Güven and Zeynep Gedikoğlu coauthored the study.

## Read the preprint

SSRN posted the 33-page preprint on 10 July 2026. It has yet to undergo peer review.

[Open the SSRN record](https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.7091011)

## Related work

[Children’s questions to people and voice assistants](/research/child-inquiry-project.md) · [Related work on parenting, inquiry, and social robots](/research/related-work.md)

## Citation

Ünlütabak, B., Sarıkaya Güven, B., Bal, O., & Gedikoğlu, Z. (2026). Children’s question-asking with voice assistants: The role of response informativeness and parenting. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.7091011

### BibTeX

```bibtex
@unpublished{unlutabak2026questions,
  title = {Children’s Question-Asking with Voice Assistants: The Role of Response Informativeness and Parenting},
  author = {Ünlütabak, Burcu and Sarıkaya Güven, Büşra and Bal, Onur and Gedikoğlu, Zeynep},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Preprint, SSRN},
  doi = {10.2139/ssrn.7091011}
}
```

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