Not just children- back in the early days of information retrieval user interface studies, they found that pretty much all search-naïve users instinctively use

Not just children- back in the early days of information retrieval user interface studies, they found that pretty much all search-naïve users instinctively use natural language (or at least "natural-language-ish") queries instead of keyword/boolean queries. This, of course, is the opposite of how search engine designers and programmers think about the problem. For a more thorough discussion, I'd suggest taking a look at Marti Hearst's "Search User Interfaces" (specifically section 4.1.2, on keyword query specification: http://searchuserinterfaces.com/book/sui_ch4_query_specification.html http://searchuserinterfaces.com/book/sui_ch4_query_specifica... ).