Poster #6 - When innovators succeed: Empowering tasks increase preschoolers exploration

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

Early childhood is filled with opportunities to explore and learn about the environment. Although a growing body of work has focused on children’s active learning from the perspective of maximizing opportunities for learning (e.g. Bonawitz et al., 2012; Ruggeri et al, 2016; Schulz & Bonawitz, 2007; Stahl & Feigenson, 2015;), less work has understood how individual differences in temperament may affect exploratory decisions. For instance, deciding whether to explore depends on two critical features: First, the learner must recognize that there are potential alternatives in the world worth discovering;  Second, the learner must expect that -- if they should chose to explore -- their interventions would likely be effective (i.e. producing meaningful information). Thus, the competing experiences of empowerment and helplessness (e.g. Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) may play a critical role in the degree to which children are exploratory -- potentially affecting their recognition of new possibilities and their ability to discover them. The current study examines how feelings of empowerment verses learned helplessness shape children’s exploration of novel toys.

Inspired by a related method in which children were exposed to reliable or unreliable environments (e.g. see Kidd, Palmeri, & Aslin, 2012), we created an experimental manipulation to give children the experience of empowerment or helplessness. We collected a sample of 72 preschool aged children (M= 55.5mos; Range= 47.5-67.4mos; 53% female) who were randomly assigned into one of three conditions: Learned Empowerment (LE), Learned Helplessness (LH), or Baseline. (See Fig. 1.) Participants underwent two trials of toy comparisons where they and a confederate were shown toys similar in nature, but not quality; we gave participants broken, dull versions of the confederate’s toys. Depending on condition, we told participants: “There’s nothing we can do [toy]. (LH)”; or, “Let’s ask them if they’ll share (LE).” Baseline participants did not interact with a confederate, and were only shown the dull version of the toy and prompted with, “See this is the [toy] I have for you to use.” After two trials of toy comparisons we introduced all participants to a novel toy. After showing them one function of the toy, children were encouraged to play freely, with a maximum of six minutes.  Our critical measure was the degree to which children showed variability of actions with the toy. This has been used in past play research as a measure of “breadth of exploration”.

Coding for variability in actions, we performed a one-way ANOVA, which revealed a marginally significant interaction, (F(2,69) = 2.479, p = 0.091). Follow-up tests revealed that there was a significant main effect of condition, where participants in the Learned Empowerment condition (M= 9.04, SD= 3.24) demonstrated significantly greater variability in play than those in the Learned Helplessness condition (M=6.88, SD=3.67); t(46)=2.17, p=0.035. The variability of actions for children in the Baseline condition fell in between (See Fig. 2).

These preliminary results suggest that experiences of empowerment and helplessness affect children’s exportation. We are in the process of replicating this result, with preliminary results supporting the robustness of this effect.

Authors

• Zachary Walden, Rutgers University
  Presenting Author

• Trisha Dehrone, Indiana University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Bonawitz, Rutgers University
  Non-Presenting Author