Children’s Trust in AI: Preliminary Validation of the K-AI Questionnaire in a New Age Group

Children increasingly encounter intelligent systems in educational and everyday contexts, yet most trust measures in human-AI interaction have been developed for adult users. This Work-in-Progress extends the validation of the child-centred K-AI Trust questionnaire to an older developmental cohort (10-14 years). Building on prior validation with 9-11 year-olds, we examine whether the instrument demonstrates acceptable internal consistency and coherent response patterns in early adolescence. Using survey data from 314 participants, we report preliminary reliability analyses and explore associations between dispositional trust (Propensity to Trust Technology; PTT) and post-interaction trust evaluations. Item refinement resulted in acceptable internal consistency for both scales (7-item K-AI; 5-item PTT). Correlational analyses revealed no significant association between dispositional and situational trust. This suggests that, in early adolescence, children's inherent propensity to trust technology may not directly shape their immediate trust evaluation of a specific intelligent system. These findings provide preliminary evidence for the developmental applicability of a child-centred trust instrument and support ongoing age-sensitive psychometric refinement.