Where science starts: spontaneous experiments in preschoolers' exploratory play.

By C. Cook, Noah D. Goodman, Laura Schulz. 2011

300 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Probabilistic models of expected information gain require integrating prior knowledge about causal hypotheses with knowledge about possible actions that might generate data relevant to those hypotheses. Here we looked at whether preschoolers (mean: 54 months) recognize "action possibilities" (affordances) in the environment that allow them to isolate variables when there is information to be gained. By manipulating the physical properties of the stimuli, we were able to affect the degree to which candidate variables could be isolated; by manipulating the base rate of candidate causes, we were able to affect the potential for information gain. Children's exploratory play was sensitive to both manipulations: given unambiguous evidence children played indiscriminately and rarely tried to isolate candidate causes; given ambiguous evidence, children both selected (Experiment 1) and designed (Experiment 2) informative interventions.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Developmental and Educational Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

Learning Powerful Policies by Using Consistent Dynamics Model (2019, background): “On the other hand, there’s enough evidence that humans learn the environment dynamics not just by observing the environment but also by interacting with the environment (Cook et al., 2011; Daniels & Nemenman, 2015).”
Handbook of Research on Learning and Instruction (2011, methodology): “Under this influence, scholars have applied three models to explain and guide learning in the psychomotor domain: information processing, expertise-novice comparison, and dynamical systems.”
Reconstructing constructivism: Causal models, Bayesian learning mechanisms and the theory theory (2012, unknown): “Even infants make these inferences (Gweon, Tenenbaum, & Schulz, 2010; Xu & Tenenbaum, 2007).”
On the nature and origin of intuitive theories : learning, physics and psychology (2015, background): “in that children conduct experiments and design interventions [165], search for new data when needed, isolate variables [32], understand when evidence is confounded”
Finding new facts; thinking new thoughts. (2012, background): “…in simple contexts, researchers have made progress in analyzing and formalizing the cognitive processes involved in optimizing information gain (Cook et al., 2011; Klayman, 1988; Klayman & Ha, 1987; Oaksford & Chater, 1994; Sobel & Kushnir, 2006; Steyvers, Tenenbaum, Wagonmakers, & Blum, 2003).”