How can children inform our understanding of exploratory learning in non-human animals? more

How can children inform our understanding of exploratory learning in non-human animals? Zoe Demery, Sarah Beck & Jackie Chappell zxd878@bham.ac.uk Schools of Biosciences & Psychology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B1 5 2TT, UK Introduction learn through play and exploration – is widely accepted as being integral to - Piaget's view – that children GeneralonMethods where we presented three increasingly complex tasks involving - Here we focus the human studies, cognitive development. - Surprisingly few scientists have systematically investigated how exploration is structured to support learning mechanisms in different situations and even fewer have studied it in non-human animals. - Traditionally, the methodological approach for studying cognitive development in human and non-human animals has been very different, but a comparative approach can be very informative. - We exploited the strong explorative tendencies of parrots and human children , and designed a series of comparative experiments to provide a window into the mechanisms and strategies used in causal learning. 1. 2. 3. 4. General Key Questions Does exploration time change with age? Doe the diversity of exploratory actions change with age? Is there greater causal understanding and success at solving tasks with age? Does the frequency and sequence of exploratory actions change with age? (i) TASK 1 p < .01 (**) FIG. 2 FIG. 3 p < .05 (*) * novel objects and physical problems to school children. - The children (2-7yo, n=1 06) were tested individually in a classroom setting, using a counterbalanced, repeated measures design, with controls for any side biases. - In each task, we recorded their exploratory behaviour in detail and measured their total exploration duration and number of different exploratory actions upon each test apparatus. - Each task examined different aspects of exploration and we asked whether these could form exploration stages in development. Task 1changes in invisible functional cues (e.g. action, weight) for an object's properties : Categorical perception in exploration - Are subtle attended to more than changes in non-functional visible cues (e.g. location, colour)? Is this attention even more pronounced for unexpected, within-type than expected between-type changes? - Goal: get the ball out of the box[FIG.1]. - All children were habituated to pushing a ball from the top of box, then presented with one of four conditions. ** (ii) TASK 2 Task 2: use physical rulesrules objects can't pass through each other) or habituated Physical (e.g. solid in exploration - Do individuals action sequences (e.g. with trial-and-error learning) to direct their exploration? - Goal: get the lego men out of the tube [FIG.2]. - Habituated to apparatus without obstructing block, then presented with block. Task 3: Causal inferences & abstraction inknowledge about hidden items to direct their exploration? exploration - Do individuals use - Goal: get one of the marbles out of the box[FIG.3]. - The children could use the plungers to act on the marbles, but there was a hole in only one of the halves of the box. In the later trials, different halves were covered up. ** (iii) TASK 3 FIG. 1 FIG. 6 FIG. 5 [FIG.4]. Conclusions - The three aspects of exploration we tested seem to occur consecutively in development FIG. 4 NB: The smoothed lines, to show the general data trends, are B-splines with resolution 20, datapoints order 20. - Task 1 : children explore more when there are invisible functional changes in an object (especially within an object type), but all visible cues are still attended to[FIG.5(i)]. Also the diversity of actions increases with age when functional changes occur. - Task 2: children explore more when a solid obstruction is introduced [FIG.5(ii)] and increasingly touch the obstruction first with age, rather than follow through the habituated action sequence[FIG.4]. - Task 3: children seem to use previous knowledge, and explore more when objects are hidden [FIG.5(iii)]. Older children can make causal inferences successfully[FIG.4]. - These results are reflected to some extent in comparative tests with parrots (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae[FIG.6]), which face similar ecological problems to us. - We hope this will give us insight into how we and other animals process information in a wide range of environmental situations.