Adults Explore More Broadly Than Children When Pedagogy is Emphasized

• In Event: Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Topic - Cognitive Processes

Abstract

Social learning is important across the lifespan, allowing instrumental and cultural information to be learned efficiently. However, teaching can be incomplete or there may be more effective solutions, requiring individuals to sometimes go past teaching and innovate (Legare & Nielsen, 2015). Childhood represents a period for exploration and information gain. For example, in independent problem-solving contexts, children sample uncertainty rather than maximizing rewards (Schulz et al., 2018). Conversely, children underperform relative to their cognitive ability when they are required to innovate rather than explore broadly (Cutting et al., 2014). This tension between exploratory ability and failure to innovate may exist because of an emphasis on social learning and convention in childhood. While children can independently discover information, referencing conventional exemplars is highly likely to provide success. Therefore, the present study contrasts the literature on independent problem-solving by providing a novel scenario in which children and adults are given incomplete teaching. Here, participants must still explore to succeed, but typical patterns of broad exploration in children may be attenuated by the social context.

To test this possibility, 32 younger children (mean age = 7.75 years, range: 6.05 – 8.95 years), 30 older children (mean age = 9.91 years, range: 9.08 – 11.43 years), and 27 adults (mean age = 33.24 years, range: 22.49 – 44.50 years) participated in a platforming game over Zoom. Participants were pedagogically shown how to navigate the game map to find a trophy. Then, they were instructed to play the game for seven minutes and try to win. Unknown to participants, platforms were removed from the map so the solution would fail, but exploring the map would provide alternative solutions. Reliance on teaching was measured by coding the proportion of time spent testing the incomplete solution. Exploration was measured using the number of in-game coins participants collected.

If children’s innovation is hampered by a sensitivity to social learning, we ought to see a greater reliance on this incomplete teaching in children than adults, despite their general exploratory prowess. Indeed, relative to adults, children tended to spend a greater proportion of their time testing the ineffective solution. The difference between older children and adults was significant (beta = 0.12, t(86) = 2.19, p = .03) and trending between younger children and adults (beta = 0.09, t(86) = 1.74, p = .09). Additionally, individual differences in sensitivity to social learning may exist across the lifespan. Thus, we collected an age-appropriate measure of authoritarianism to examine the effects of individual differences in sensitivity to convention on exploration. Consequently, exploration increased significantly with age (beta = 0.02, t(78) = 2.06, p = .04), but decreased significantly with authoritarianism across ages (beta = -0.27, t(86) = -2.28, p = .03).

This work provides initial evidence that when social information and exploration are in tension, either as a result of individual differences or age, participants reduce their innovation. Future work will continue to probe these differences by classifying types of exploration and investigating the increased copying in middle childhood.

Authors

• Mia Radovanovic, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ece Yucer, University of Toronto
  Presenting Author

• Denise Arefhaghi, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author

• Christie Lai, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jessica A Sommerville, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author