2-193 - Information Gain as a Guide for Decision-Making in Early Exploratory Learning

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Exploratory learning requires decision-making: Learners must decide which features of their environment to attend to, and which investigations to make. The potential for exploratory behavior to lead to learning is therefore largely dependent on the learner making these decisions successfully. Of particular importance is an ability and tendency to select the most informative investigations, or those that are expected to best resolve the presence of uncertainty. Given the importance of this process to early learning, this symposium includes four papers examining when and how young learners make decisions that support optimal information gain. All papers consider critical questions regarding the relationship between these decisions and children’s subsequent learning across a variety of exploratory contexts.

First, paper 1 will examine whether inducing a state of awe – an emotion known to increase perceived uncertainty – will increase preschoolers’ decisions to explore their learning environment. Paper 2 extends this topic by asking how learners decide which investigations to make during exploration, and whether this choice is guided by the potential for information gain. Next, paper 3 will compare the informativeness of children’s questions in a traditional 20-questions game to a novel maze task to examine whether task-specific challenges might mask the effectiveness of information search at younger ages. Finally, paper 4 considers developmental differences in exploratory decision-making, and whether these reflect changing motivations for information gain across the lifespan. Together, these papers interpret information gain as motivation and a guide in young learners’ choices, illustrating how this process influences exploratory learning in early life.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chair

• Caren Walker, University of California, San Diego

Individual Presentations

• Affecting play: Awe increases preschooler’s exploration and discovery. - Presenting Author: Joseph Anthony Colantonio, Graduate Student; Non-Presenting Author: Elizabeth Bonawitz, Rutgers University

• Expectations of Causal Structure Influence Preschoolers’ Choice of Interventions. - Presenting Author: Elizabeth Lapidow, University of California, San Diego; Non-Presenting Author: Caren Walker, University of California, San Diego

• Preschoolers’ information search in a question-asking and spatial exploration game. - Presenting Author: Nora Swaboda, Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development, Berlin; Non-Presenting Author: Björn Meder, Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development Berlin; Non-Presenting Author: Azzurra Ruggeri, Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development Berlin; Technical University Munich (School of Education)

• Learning From Approach-Avoid Decisions: Children Explore and Learn More Than Adults. - Presenting Author: Emily G. Liquin, Princeton University; Non-Presenting Author: Alison Gopnik, University of California - Berkeley