Strategic collaboration according to the law of comparative advantage involves dividing tasks based on the relative capabilities of group members. Three experiments (N = 405, primarily White and Asian, 45% female, collected 2016–2019 in Canada) examined how this strategy develops in children when dividing cognitive labor. Children divided questions about numbers between two partners. By 7 years, children allocated difficult questions to the skilled partner (Experiment 1, d = 1.42; Experiment 2, d = 0.87). However, younger children demonstrated a self-serving bias, choosing the easiest questions for themselves. Only when engaging in a third-party collaborative task did 5-year-olds assign harder questions to the more skilled individual (Experiment 3, d = 0.55). These findings demonstrate early understanding of strategic collaboration subject to a self-serving bias.

中文翻译：

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迷你经理：孩子们在合作者之间战略性地分配认知劳动，但有自私的偏见

根据比较优势法则的战略协作涉及根据团队成员的相对能力划分任务。三项实验（N  = 405，主要是白人和亚洲人，45% 女性，于 2016-2019 年在加拿大收集）研究了这种策略在分配认知劳动时如何在儿童中发展。孩子们在两个伙伴之间分配有关数字的问题。到 7 岁时，儿童将困难的问题分配给熟练的伴侣（实验 1，d  = 1.42；实验 2，d  = 0.87）。然而，年幼的孩子表现出自私的偏见，为自己选择最简单的问题。只有在参与第三方协作任务时，5 岁的孩子才会将更难的问题分配给技能更高的人（实验 3，d  = 0.55）。这些发现表明对战略合作的早期理解受到自私偏见的影响。