Default beliefs guide learning under uncertainty in children and older adults

Abstract

Across the lifespan, humans rely on the ability to learn from new experiences to adapt to uncertain and changing environments. Here we investigated age-related differences in the reliance on default-belief settings during learning in these environments. We collected behavioral data with a predictive-inference task in children, adolescents as well as younger and older adults. Using a Bayesian belief-updating model, we first showed that age-related learning differences might be due to a reduced ability to adjust learning according to dissociable normative factors. The results revealed a reduced consideration of uncertainty in older adults and increased perseveration in both children and older adults. Simulations indicated that interventions to reduce perseveration might lead to more similar performance levels between the age groups. In a follow-up experiment, we found that one such intervention which randomly distorted participants' initial predictions strongly reduced perseveration, but led to increased performance differences. This counter-intuitive effect resulted from an environmental control of learning in children and older adults through random information from the intervention to reduce perseveration. Across the two experiments, our findings show that age-related learning impairments can be explained with insufficient updating from a default belief. In stable environments, this results in perseverative behavior, while in the presence of random environmental information, it leads to environmental control. We formalized the emergence of these belief-updating behaviors with a model that updated beliefs only to an acceptable level of plausibility, suggesting that children and older adults are more quickly satisfied to report beliefs that reflect their default than younger adults. This model not only accounted for our own findings but might also provide a new perspective on a wide variety of previous findings in the developmental and aging literature.

The stability flexibility tradeoff and the dark side of detail

“…Our developmental group also deviated from normative inference in the frequent use of non-updates. This finding is in line with other recent work that has suggested that increased perseveration and increased response variability in children might both stem from a liberal satisficing policy that leaves children highly influenced by default beliefs (Bruckner, Nassar, Li, & Eppinger, 2020). Taken together, these findings suggest that despite showing qualitative hallmarks of adaptive learning, people deviate substantially from optimality in a manner that depends on factors, including their age and attention to detail.…”

Resource‐rational approach to meta‐control problems across the lifespan

“…The first model has been proposed in the context of a study examining performance of children, young adults, and older adults in a predictive-inference task in which participants had to continuously update their predictions based on uncertain (noisy) information. Specifically, participants had to adjust their predictions regarding the position of an invisible helicopter based on bags dropped by the helicopter that provided uncertain information about the true hidden location (Bruckner, Nassar, Li & Eppinger, 2020;Nassar, Bruckner, Gold, Li, Heekeren & Eppinger, 2016). One major empirical finding by Bruckner and colleagues (2020) was that children and older adults showed strongly enhanced perseverative behavior when compared to younger adults.…”

“…Specifically, participants had to adjust their predictions regarding the position of an invisible helicopter based on bags dropped by the helicopter that provided uncertain information about its true hidden location (Bruckner et al, 2020; Nassar et al, 2016). One major empirical finding by Bruckner et al (2020) was that children and older adults showed strongly enhanced perseverative behavior when compared to younger adults. That is, they failed to update their predictions and this effect was particularly pronounced for small prediction errors, when the update is potentially more effortful.…”

Human ageing is associated with more rigid concept spaces

“…On the one hand, previous work suggests that older adults have more difficulty learning from uncertain outcomes compared to younger adults (Nassar et al, 2016). This difficulty manifests as perseverative behaviour, whereby older adults have a tendency to repeat previous responses despite changes in the environment (Bruckner et al, 2020;Eppinger, Walter, Heekeren, & Li, 2013). With respect to the current study, these findings may suggest a decreased sensitivity to prevalence-induced concept change in older adults, because the repetition of past choices makes it less likely that a rarer category will be chosen after a shift in prevalence.…”

“…Cleeremans, Destrebecqz, & Maud Boyer, 1998;Nassar et al, 2012;McGuire, Nassar, Gold, & Kable, 2014;Wilson & Niv, 2012). From this perspective, older adults may have more difficulty learning these latent states of stimuli and default to their original responses (Nassar et al, 2016;Bruckner et al, 2020). Notably, in most task environments these impairments in inferences about latent states are associated with performance deficits.…”