Young Children’s Help-Seeking Expectations in Teacher-Child Interactions: The Effects of Teachers’ Familiarity and Response Valence

Effective help-seeking is essential for young children’s adaptation in early childhood education settings, yet little is known about how they selectively seek help based on different social cues. This study examined how young children integrate teachers’ familiarity and response valence when predicting a protagonist’s help-seeking behavior. Across two studies, 90 Han Chinese children aged 4–6 years (45 boys) completed a third-party task simulating teacher-child interactions. In Study 1, familiarity was manipulated using photographs of each child’s real teachers, whereas Study 2 employed standardized cartoon figures and verbal cues to indicate familiarity. The results showed that children tended to expect that the protagonist would seek help from familiar teachers, especially those who responded positively. Meanwhile, they hesitated to expect that the protagonist would seek help from unfamiliar teachers, regardless of their response valence. This pattern indicates that familiarity consistently exerted a stronger influence than response valence, as children consistently prioritized familiarity when anticipating support. Together, these findings highlight how young children flexibly integrate multiple social cues when forming help-seeking expectations and offer practical implications for fostering secure, responsive teacher-child relationships in early education.