Probability Learning: Changes in Behavior Across Time and Development

Plate, Rista C.; Fulvio, Jacqueline M.; Shutts, Kristin; Green, C. Shawn; Pollak, Seth D.

doi:10.1111/cdev.12718

Cited by 21 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Mean accuracy across all memory items was 77.2%. This finding also parallels a recent study in which, despite children accurately indicating the best option following a probabilistic learning task, they were less likely than adults to maximize their choices toward that option (Plate et al, 2018). Together these findings suggest Systematic Exploration in Young Children 10 that children's choices are not motivated by achieving maximum reward to the extent that adults' are.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 86%

Systematic Exploration and Uncertainty Dominate Young Children’s Choices

Blanco¹,

Sloutsky²

2019

Preprint

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Highlights:• Little is known about how children balance exploration and exploitation across multiple decisions, or how this process changes over development.• Exploration should be especially useful for young children, who need information to understand how the world works.• In two reported experiments, adults and 4-year-olds perform a decision-making task in which different options are worth different amounts of reward.• While adults maximized reward, children exhibited heightened levels of exploration and were characterized by sequential patterns in their choices that approximate uncertaintybased exploration.Elevated Exploration in Young Children 3 ABSTRACT Organisms need to constantly balance the competing demands of gathering information and using previously acquired information to obtain rewarding outcomes (i.e., the "explorationexploitation" dilemma). Exploration is critical to obtain information to discover how the world works, which should be particularly important for young children. While studies have shown that young children explore in response to surprising events, little is known about how they balance exploration and exploitation across multiple decisions or about how this process changes with development. In this study we compare decision-making patterns of children and adults and evaluate the relative influences of reward-seeking, random exploration, and systematic switching (which approximates uncertainty-directed exploration). In a second experiment we directly test the effect of uncertainty on children's choices. Influential models of decision-making generally describe systematic exploration as a computationally refined capacity that relies on top-down cognitive control. We demonstrate that (1) systematic patterns dominate young children's behavior (facilitating exploration), despite protracted development of cognitive control, and (2) that uncertainty plays a major, but complicated, role in determining children's choices. We conclude that while young children's immature top-down control should hinder adult-like systematic exploration, other mechanisms may pick up the slack, facilitating broad information gathering in a systematic fashion to build a foundation of knowledge for use later in life.Exploration is a critical activity in which organisms seek information that they can use to make effective and rewarding decisions. Although exploration is often advantageous, it is not cost free. The "exploration-exploitation" dilemma (see Hills, et al., 2015 & Mehlhorn, el al., 2015 for reviews) is a tradeoff: gather information and forgo rewards or forgo acquiring information and use existing knowledge to get rewards. Effective decision-making requires appropriately balancing exploration and exploitation, with the ideal balance depending on the environment and the knowledge state of the individual. Higher levels of exploration are optimal when there is greater uncertainty (i.e., when one knows little about the environment, or when the environment is variable or dynamic), and therefore exploration ...

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 86%

Systematic Exploration and Uncertainty Dominate Young Children’s Choices

Blanco¹,

Sloutsky²

2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The task was originally developed by Plate and colleagues [ 27 ], who gave permission for its use and adaptation. The original task consisted of 8 rocks, 200 trials, and the largest proportion of gold coins under the same rock was 70%.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The original task consisted of 8 rocks, 200 trials, and the largest proportion of gold coins under the same rock was 70%. The number of trials was too high for 25% of the children between ages 4 and 11 and for these children the data could not be used [ 27 ]. Therefore, we shortened the task to 120 trials, decreased the number of rocks from 8 to 6, and increased the largest proportion of gold coins under the same rock from 70% to 75%.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reward Responsiveness, Optimism, and Social and Mental Functioning in Children Aged 6-7: Protocol of a Cross-Sectional Pilot Study

Vrijen¹,

Ackermans²,

Bosma³

et al. 2020

JMIR Res Protoc

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Background There is evidence that reward responsiveness and optimism are associated with mental and social functioning in adolescence and adulthood, but it is unknown if this is also the case for young children. Part of the reason for this gap in the literature is that the instruments that are used to assess reward responsiveness and optimism in adolescents and adults are usually not suitable for young children. Objective Two behavioral tasks to assess reward learning, a questionnaire on reward responsiveness, and a questionnaire on optimism/pessimism will be tested on their feasibility and reliability in children aged 6-7. Depending on their feasibility and reliability, these instruments will also be used to investigate if reward responsiveness and optimism are associated with mental and social functioning in young children. Methods For this cross-sectional pilot study, we adapted a number of tasks and questionnaires to the needs of 6-7-year-old children, by simplification of items, oral rather than written assessment, and reducing the number of conditions and items. We will approach teachers and, with their help, aim to include 70 children aged 6-7 to assess the feasibility and reliability of the tasks and questionnaires. Feasibility measures that will be reported are the proportion of children completing the task/questionnaire, the proportion of children that were able to explain the instructions in their own words to the researcher, and the proportion of children that correctly answered the control questions. The reliability of the scales will be assessed by computing Cronbach α and item-total score correlations and the reliability of the tasks by correlations between different consecutive blocks of trials. Ethics approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of the Department of Pedagogy and Educational Sciences. Results Data collection was originally planned in March and April 2020, but has been postponed due to Corona virus regulations. We expect to collect the data in the first half of 2021. The findings will be disseminated in preprints and peer-reviewed publications. Conclusions The development of feasible and reliable instruments for assessing reward responsiveness and optimism in young children is expected to benefit future research on underlying mechanisms of mental and social functioning in young children. If the instruments assessed in this study are usable with young children, it would be particularly interesting to include them in cohort studies because this would enable investigating not only concurrent associations, but also prospective associations between reward responsiveness and optimism early in life and mental and social functioning later in life. If, as we hypothesize, reward responsiveness and optimism are not only associated with (prospective) mental and social functioning in adults and adolescents but also in young children, this could provide a way of identifying vulnerable children already at an early stage. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) PRR1-10.2196/18902

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“…The task was originally developed by Plate and colleagues [27], who gave permission for its use and adaptation. The original task consisted of eight rocks, 200 trials and the largest proportion of gold coins under the same rock was 70%.…”

Section: Task 1: Probability Learning Task: Finding Gold Coins (Pl Gomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The original task consisted of eight rocks, 200 trials and the largest proportion of gold coins under the same rock was 70%. The number of trials was too high for 25% of the children between age 4 and 11 and for these children the data could not be used [27]. Therefore, we shortened the task to 120 trials, decreased the number of rocks from eight to six, and increased the largest proportion of gold coins under the same rock from 70% to 75%.…”

Section: Task 1: Probability Learning Task: Finding Gold Coins (Pl Gomentioning

confidence: 99%

Reward Responsiveness, Optimism, and Social and Mental Functioning in Children Aged 6-7: Protocol of a Cross-Sectional Pilot Study

Vrijen¹,

Ackermans²,

Bosma³

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

There is evidence that reward responsiveness and optimism are associated with mental and social functioning in adolescence and adulthood, but it is unknown if this is also the case for young children. Part of the reason for this gap in the literature is that the instruments that are used to assess reward responsiveness and optimism in adolescents and adults are usually not suitable for young children. For the present pilot study, we adapted a number of tasks and questionnaires to the needs of 6-7-year-old children, by simplification of items, oral rather than written assessment, and reducing the number of conditions and items. Two behavioural tasks to assess reward learning, a questionnaire on reward responsiveness, and a questionnaire on optimism/pessimism will be tested on their feasibility and reliability in children aged 6-7 years. Depending on their feasibility and reliability, these instruments will also be used to investigate if reward responsiveness and optimism are associated with mental and social functioning in young children. We aim to include 70 children. Our findings could benefit many researchers interested in studying reward responsiveness and optimism in young children. If the instruments assessed in the present study are usable with young children, it would be particularly interesting to include them in cohort studies because this would enable investigating prospective associations between reward responsiveness and optimism early in life and mental and social functioning later in life, and may, ultimately, help to provide a way of identifying vulnerable children already at an early stage.

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Probability Learning: Changes in Behavior Across Time and Development

Cited by 21 publications

References 32 publications

Systematic Exploration and Uncertainty Dominate Young Children’s Choices

Systematic Exploration and Uncertainty Dominate Young Children’s Choices

Reward Responsiveness, Optimism, and Social and Mental Functioning in Children Aged 6-7: Protocol of a Cross-Sectional Pilot Study

Reward Responsiveness, Optimism, and Social and Mental Functioning in Children Aged 6-7: Protocol of a Cross-Sectional Pilot Study

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