In the present study we examined the influence of question format and age on Iranian children's responses to various types of yes–no questions, to assess potential response biases. The participants were 177 2‐to 6‐year old native speakers of Persian who were asked both positively and negatively formulated yes–no questions about eight household objects. The results showed that children of different ages are influenced differently by the way questions are formulated. The findings also suggest that children display a compliance tendency when asked yes–no questions. That is, they tend to respond to yes–no questions in the direction implied by the question: ‘yes’ to positively worded questions and ‘no’ to negatively worded questions. This tendency, however, seems to grow weaker as children get older. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.