It’s not the treasure, it’s the hunt:Children are more explorative on an explore/exploit task than adults

The current study investigates how children act on a standardexploreexploit bandit task relative to adults. In Experiment 1,we used childfriendly versions of the bandit task and foundthat children did not play in a way that maximized payout.However, children were able to identify the machines thathad the highest level of payout and overwhelmingly preferredit. We also show that children’s exploration is not random. Forexample, children selected the bandits from left to rightmultiple times. In Experiment 2, we had adults complete thetask in Experiment 1 with different sets of instructions. Whentold to maximize learning, adults explored the task in muchthe same way that children did. Together, these results suggestthat children are more interested in exploring than exploiting,and a potential explanation for this is that children are tryingto learn as much about the environment as they can

Rationalization may improve predictability rather than accuracy

We present a theoretical and an empirical challenge to Cushman's claim that rationalization is adaptive because it allows humans to extract more accurate beliefs from our non-rational motivations for behavior. Rationalization sometimes generates more adaptive decisions by making our beliefs about the world less accurate. We suggest that the most important adaptive advantage of rationalization is instead that it increases our predictability (and therefore attractiveness) as potential partners in cooperative social interactions

A picture of eight turtles: the child’s understanding of cardinality and numerosity

An essential part of understanding number words (e.g., eight) is understanding that all number words refer to the dimension of experience we call numerosity. Knowledge of this general principle may be separable from knowledge of individual number word meanings. That is, children may learn the meanings of at least a few individual number words before realizing that all number words refer to numerosity. Alternatively, knowledge of this general principle may form relatively early and proceed to guide and constrain the acquisition of individual number word meanings. The current article describes two experiments in which 116 children (2½- to 4-year-olds) were given a Word Extension task as well as a standard Give-N task. Results show that only children who understood the cardinality principle of counting successfully extended number words from one set to another based on numerosity—with evidence that a developing understanding of this concept emerges as children approach the cardinality principle induction. These findings support the view that children do not use a broad understanding of number words to initially connect number words to numerosity but rather make this connection around the time that they figure out the cardinality principle of counting

Learning to represent exact numbers

This article focuses on how young children acquire concepts for exact, cardinal numbers (e.g., three, seven, two hundred, etc.). I believe that exact numbers are a conceptual structure that was invented by people, and that most children acquire gradually, over a period of months or years during early childhood. This article reviews studies that explore children’s number knowledge at various points during this acquisition process. Most of these studies were done in my own lab, and assume the theoretical framework proposed by Carey (2009). In this framework, the counting list (‘one,’ ‘two,’ ‘three,’ etc.) and the counting routine (i.e., reciting the list and pointing to objects, one at a time) form a placeholder structure. Over time, the placeholder structure is gradually filled in with meaning to become a conceptual structure that allows the child to represent exact numbers (e.g., There are 24 children in my class, so I need to bring 24 cupcakes for the party.) A number system is a socially shared, structured set of symbols that pose a learning challenge for children. But once children have acquired a number system, it allows them to represent information (i.e., large, exact cardinal values) that they had no way of representing before

Why would a professor self-publish a book?

Self-publishing is common outside the academy, but faculty members rarely publish their own books. In this essay, a University of California professor explains why she chase to self-publish her book about academic writing and the costs and benefits of that choice

The Idea of an Exact Number

Everything related to the paper by Sarnecka & Wright (2013