In Pursuit of Knowledge: Preschoolers Expect Agents to Weigh Information Gain and Information Cost When Deciding Whether to Explore
In Pursuit of Knowledge: Preschoolers Expect Agents to Weigh Information Gain and Information Cost When Deciding Whether to Explore
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DOI：
10.1111/cdev.13557
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发表时间：
2021-03-19
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Jara-Ettinger, Julian
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Aboody, Rosie;Zhou, Caiqin;Jara-Ettinger, Julian
在决定是否探索时，代理人必须同时考虑他们对信息的需求和信息的成本。儿童是否认识到，探索反映了行动成本和预期信息收益之间的权衡，从而相应地推断出认知状态？在两个实验中，4岁和5岁的儿童(N=144；不同种族和民族)判断，拒绝获得低成本信息的代理人一定已经知道这一点，而为了获得信息而付出更大成本的代理人肯定有更大的认知欲望。两项对照研究表明，这些发现不能用能力和知识之间的低水平联系来解释。我们的结果表明，学龄前儿童的心理理论包括对成本如何与认知欲望和状态相互作用以产生探索性行动的预期。
When deciding whether to explore, agents must consider both their need for information and its cost. Do children recognize that exploration reflects a trade-off between action costs and expected information gain, inferring epistemic states accordingly? In two experiments, 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 144; of diverse race and ethnicity) judge that an agent who refuses to obtain low-cost information must have already known it, and an agent who incurs a greater cost to gain information must have a greater epistemic desire. Two control studies suggest that these findings cannot be explained by low-level associations between competence and knowledge. Our results suggest that preschoolers' theory of mind includes expectations about how costs interact with epistemic desires and states to produce exploratory action.