Look before you leap: pre-decision information seeking in children, adolescents, and adults

• In Event: Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Topic - Cognitive Processes

Abstract

When making decisions under uncertainty, it is sometimes possible to sample information before making a final choice. Prior research has suggested that adolescents show a distinctive tolerance to uncertainty, sampling information less than both adults and children before making risky decisions (van den Bos & Hertwig, 2017). However, little is known about the factors that influence pre-decision information sampling through development. In this study we manipulated the quantity of information gained with each sample and the difficulty of the decision in a within-participant design. This allowed us to examine developmental changes in context adaptation during information seeking.
In a large-scale study (N = 643) conducted in London’s Science Museum, participants aged between 8 and 25 years sampled information before making decisions. Participants decided whether to feed a cat or a dog from a jar that contained an unknown distribution of the pets' favorite treats. Before making their choice, participants could click on the jar as many times as they liked to sample some of the treats from the jar. In this way, participants could learn about the distribution of the two types of treats before making a decision. The decision context was varied by manipulating the quantity of information available with each sample (1, 3, or 10 treats were revealed with each click) and the distribution of the treats (easy decision: 80:20, difficult decision: 60:40).
We found that sampling increased with age from childhood through adolescence and into early adulthood (p < .001; generalized eta squared [GES] = .05). We found that participants sampled less when they received more information per sample (p < .001; GES = .02), and more when the decision was difficult (treats were more evenly distributed; p < .001; GES = .01). Although this pattern was observed in every age group, age interacted with each of these effects, suggesting that sensitivity to both the quantity of information (p < .001; GES = .003) and decision difficulty increased (p < .001; GES = .004) with age.
We found that information sampling increased with age, as did sensitivity to the decision context. At all ages in the study, participants were sensitive to the quantity and quality of the information they had received. In contrast to prior research (van den Bos & Hertwig, 2017), we did not find attenuation of information sampling in adolescents. We suggest that adolescents’ tolerance for uncertainty may arise only in ‘hot’ decision contexts with salient rewards, but not in ‘cold’ decision contexts such as the one examined in the current study. Future research should determine the role of rewards in tolerance for uncertainty across development.

Authors

• Lily FitzGibbon, University of Reading
  Presenting Author

• Greta Fastrich, University of Western Australia
  Non-Presenting Author

• Johnny Lau, University of Reading
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kou Murayama, University of Reading
  Non-Presenting Author