Exploring the relative contributions of reward-history and functionality information to children's acquisition of the Aesop's fable task.

Investigation of tool-using behaviours has long been a means by which to explore causal reasoning in children and nonhuman animals. Much of the recent research has focused on the "Aesop's Fable" paradigm, in which objects must be dropped into water to bring a floating reward within reach. An underlying problem with these, as with many causal reasoning studies, is that functionality information and reward history are confounded: a tool that is functionally useful is also rewarded, while a tool that is not functionally useful is not rewarded. It is therefore not possible to distinguish between behaviours motivated by functional understanding of the properties of the objects involved, and those influenced by reward-history. Here, we devised an adapted version of the Aesop's Fable paradigm which decouples functionality information and reward history by making use of situations in which the use of a particular tool should have enabled a subject to obtain (or not obtain) a reward, but the outcome was affected by the context. Children aged 4-11 were given experience of a range of tools that varied independently in whether they were functional or non-functional and rewarded or non-rewarded. They were then given the opportunity to choose which tools they would like to use in a test trial, thereby providing an assessment of whether they relied on information about functionality or the reward history associated with the object or a combination of the two. Children never significantly used reward history to drive their choices of tools, while the influence of functionality information increased with age, becoming dominant by age 7. However, not all children behaved in a consistent manner, and even by 10 years of age, only around a third exclusively used functionality as a basis for their decision-making. These findings suggest that from around the age of 7-years, children begin to emphasize functionality information when learning in novel situations, even if competing reward information is available, but that even in the oldest age-group, most children did not exclusively use functionality information

How do children solve Aesop's Fable?

Studies on members of the crow family using the "Aesop's Fable" paradigm have revealed remarkable abilities in these birds, and suggested a mechanism by which associative learning and folk physics may interact when learning new problems. In the present study, children between 4 and 10 years of age were tested on the same tasks as the birds. Overall the performance of the children between 5-7-years was similar to that of the birds, while children from 8-years were able to succeed in all tasks from the first trial. However the pattern of performance across tasks suggested that different learning mechanisms might be being employed by children than by adult birds. Specifically, it is possible that in children, unlike corvids, performance is not affected by counter-intuitive mechanism cues.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from PLOS via http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.004057

Erratum: The development of support intuitions and object causality in juvenile Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius).

Knowledge about the causal relationship between objects has been studied extensively in human infants, and more recently in adult animals using differential looking time experiments. How knowledge about object support develops in non-human animals has yet to be explored. Here, we studied the ontogeny of support relations in Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius), a bird species known for its sophisticated cognitive abilities. Using an expectancy violation paradigm, we measured looking time responses to possible and impossible video and image stimuli. We also controlled for experience with different support types to determine whether the emergence of support intuitions is dependent upon specific interactions with objects, or if reasoning develops independently. At age 9 months, birds looked more at a tool moving a piece of cheese that was not in contact than one that was in direct contact. By the age of 6 months, birds that had not experienced string as a support to hold up objects looked more at impossible images with string hanging from below (unsupported), rather than above (supported). The development of support intuitions may be independent of direct experience with specific support, or knowledge gained from interactions with other objects may be generalised across contexts

The experiences of those who support researchers struggling with their mental health

This international survey examines the nature of the relationships between researchers who struggle with their mental health, and those in the community who try to support them. This work examines who these 'supporters' are, who they help, what they do, and it paints a complex picture of how they feel about this supporting role, and what they need to do it

Performance in Object-Choice Aesop's Fable Tasks Are Influenced by Object Biases in New Caledonian Crows but not in Human Children

The ability to reason about causality underlies key aspects of human cognition, but the extent to which non-humans understand causality is still largely unknown. The Aesop's Fable paradigm, where objects are inserted into water-filled tubes to obtain out-of-reach rewards, has been used to test casual reasoning in birds and children. However, success on these tasks may be influenced by other factors, specifically, object preferences present prior to testing or arising during pre-test stone-dropping training. Here, we assessed this 'object-bias' hypothesis by giving New Caledonian crows and 5-10 year old children two object-choice Aesop's Fable experiments: sinking vs. floating objects, and solid vs. hollow objects. Before each test, we assessed subjects' object preferences and/or trained them to prefer the alternative object. Both crows and children showed pre-test object preferences, suggesting that birds in previous Aesop's Fable studies may also have had initial preferences for objects that proved to be functional on test. After training to prefer the non-functional object, crows, but not children, performed more poorly on these two object-choice Aesop's Fable tasks than subjects in previous studies. Crows dropped the non-functional objects into the tube on their first trials, indicating that, unlike many children, they do not appear to have an a priori understanding of water displacement. Alternatively, issues with inhibition could explain their performance. The crows did, however, learn to solve the tasks over time. We tested crows further to determine whether their eventual success was based on learning about the functional properties of the objects, or associating dropping the functional object with reward. Crows inserted significantly more rewarded, non-functional objects than non-rewarded, functional objects. These findings suggest that the ability of New Caledonian crows to produce performances rivaling those of young children on object-choice Aesop's Fable tasks is partly due to pre-existing object preferences.This research was funded by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framewor k Programme (FP7/ 2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement No. 3399933, awarded to NSC (funding RM, SAJ, EL & NSC). AHT was funded by a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship from the Royal Society of New Zealand

Exploring the relative contributions of reward-history and functionality information to children's acquisition of the Aesop's fable task.

Investigation of tool-using behaviours has long been a means by which to explore causal reasoning in children and nonhuman animals. Much of the recent research has focused on the "Aesop's Fable" paradigm, in which objects must be dropped into water to bring a floating reward within reach. An underlying problem with these, as with many causal reasoning studies, is that functionality information and reward history are confounded: a tool that is functionally useful is also rewarded, while a tool that is not functionally useful is not rewarded. It is therefore not possible to distinguish between behaviours motivated by functional understanding of the properties of the objects involved, and those influenced by reward-history. Here, we devised an adapted version of the Aesop's Fable paradigm which decouples functionality information and reward history by making use of situations in which the use of a particular tool should have enabled a subject to obtain (or not obtain) a reward, but the outcome was affected by the context. Children aged 4-11 were given experience of a range of tools that varied independently in whether they were functional or non-functional and rewarded or non-rewarded. They were then given the opportunity to choose which tools they would like to use in a test trial, thereby providing an assessment of whether they relied on information about functionality or the reward history associated with the object or a combination of the two. Children never significantly used reward history to drive their choices of tools, while the influence of functionality information increased with age, becoming dominant by age 7. However, not all children behaved in a consistent manner, and even by 10 years of age, only around a third exclusively used functionality as a basis for their decision-making. These findings suggest that from around the age of 7-years, children begin to emphasize functionality information when learning in novel situations, even if competing reward information is available, but that even in the oldest age-group, most children did not exclusively use functionality information

Difference from random choice for each model across age groups.

<p>Difference from random choice for each model across age groups.</p

Examples of answers given to the question “How do you think it works?”

<p>Answers were coded by two observers, who had an 89% concordance rate. Children who said nothing were not included, children who spoke but did not describe were coded as “no explanation”, children who described some connection between their action and the outcome, but offered no explanation were coded as “description explanation” and those that mentioned connectivity or “pushing” were coded as “inference explanation”.</p

Performance of Children on Task 1.

<p>2a. shows the median proportion of children of different age groups across the five trials of Task 1. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. 2b shows the individual marble insertions of 3 children chosen at random from each age cohort. Each column represents the order in which items were inserted within a single trial. Grey columns indicate trials not performed due to error-free performance in the three previous trials. Stars represent trials in which that age group performed above chance according to one-sample wilcoxen (4-year-olds: (1^st: W = 1, n = 9, p>0.05; 2^nd: W = 36, n = 12, p>0.1; 3^rd: W = 38, n = 12, p>0.1; 4^th: W = 29, n = 10, p>0.1; 5^th: W = 71, n = 13, p<0.05; 5-year-olds: 1^st: W = 12, n = 8, p = >0.05, 2^nd: W = 7, n = 10, p>0.5, 3^rd: W = 29, n = 12, p>0.1, 4^th: W = 63, n = 14, p = 0.05; 5^th: W = 82, n = 15, p<0.05; 7-year-olds: 1^st: W = 28, n = 9, p>0.05; 2^nd: W = 11, n = 9, p>0.05, 3^rd: W = 41, n = 9, p<0.02; 4^th: W = 59, n = 14, p>0.05; 5^th: W = 100, n = 14, p<0.001; 8-year-olds: 1st: W = 52, n = 11, p<0.05; 2nd: W = 45, n = 11, p<0.05; 3rd: W = 66, n = 11, p<0.005; 4th: W = 52, n = 11, p<0.05; 5th: W = 66, n = 11, p<0.005; 9/10-year-olds: 1st: W = 75, n = 12, p<0.005; 2nd: W = 45, n = 11, p<0.002; 3rd: W = 78, n = 12, p<0.005; 4^th: W = 82, n = 13, p<0.005; 5th: W = 78, n = 12, p<0.005).</p

Number of children in each age group that offered each level of explanation.

<p>Number of children in each age group that offered each level of explanation.</p