Testing a Framework of Environmental Adaptation in Children's Learning Strategies

私人/私人助理：凯瑟琳·亚当斯·香农 项目总结 孩子们如何在他们早期的社会环境中学习？社交学习中的一个重要因素是 来自社会伙伴的帮助的响应性或可靠性。儿童反应迟钝或 不一致的照顾可能经常让他们的求助得不到回应；其他孩子可能会经历 不同的社交伙伴，他们的帮助程度各不相同。尽管它会对长期学习结果产生影响， 我们仍然对幼儿如何将他们的学习策略作为可靠性的函数进行调整知之甚少 他们在社会环境中的帮助，以及这种适应如何塑造学习结果。 当前提案的目标是开发和测试一个描述环境的框架 儿童学习策略中的适应。在对4至6岁儿童进行的一系列实验中，我们从一个 一种简单的设计，它将“帮助的可靠性”作为社交伙伴是否一致地响应 或者在孩子们完成一项学习任务(例如，弄清楚玩具是如何工作的)之前，忽视求助的请求。在这个范围内 在实验背景下，我们解决了三个具体目标： 在目标1中，我们询问儿童是否将他们的(1)学习目标和(2)决定调整为独自探索或寻求 基于社交伙伴过去的乐于助人的帮助，如果是的话，这些适应是否能最大限度地促进学习 在考虑到获得帮助的可能性的情况下，结果。如果一种给定的行为有利于在一个社会中学习，那么它就是适应性的。 环境，但同样的行为可能会导致另一种行为的成本。由此得出的结论是，有益的学习适应 如果环境条件发生变化，可能会变得不适应。在目标2中，我们引入了一个 可靠到不可靠和不可靠到可靠的帮助改变，这样一个社会伴侣谁 在学习停止响应孩子的求助之前是有帮助的(反之亦然)。在这里，我们测试一下 环境变化可能会导致儿童使用不匹配的学习策略，这反过来又会导致 学习效果不佳。在目标3中，我们构建了一个描述环境的计算模型 根据基于效用的社会推理原则对儿童学习策略的适应，其中 儿童考虑他们的社会伙伴的行为以最大化预期的效用(即，净收益 成本)。我们在实验中测试了针对儿童行为的模型预测。 综上所述，这项工作将提供关键的经验数据和计算模型来推动我们的 了解儿童如何在不同的社会环境中学习。这项提议的长期目标是 对儿童，特别是那些生活在缺乏支持的家庭的儿童，产生新的见解 在社交学习过程中做出决定，塑造他们未来的学习结果。调查结果显示 承诺告知改善社会学习互动的干预措施，以此作为支持早期教育的一种手段。

PI/PD: Katherine Adams Shannon PROJECT SUMMARY How do children learn within their early social environments? An important factor in social learning is the responsiveness or reliability of help from social partners. Children who experience unresponsive or inconsistent caregiving may often have their bids for help go unanswered; other children may experience different social partners who vary in their helpfulness. Despite its ramifications for long-term learning outcomes, we still understand little about how young children adapt their learning strategies as a function of the reliability of help in their social environments, and how such adaptations shape learning outcomes. The goal of the current proposal is to develop and test a framework that describes environmental adaptation in children’s learning strategies. In a series of experiments with 4- to 6-year-olds, we start with a simple design that operationalizes ‘reliability of help’ as whether or not a social partner consistently responds to or ignores bids for help before children complete a learning task (e.g., figure out how a toy works). Within this experimental setting, we address 3 specific aims: In Aim 1, we ask if children adapt their (1) learning goals and (2) decisions to explore alone or seek help based on the past helpfulness of a social partner, and if so, whether these adaptations maximize learning outcomes given the likelihood of receiving help. A given behavior is adaptive if it benefits learning in one social environment, but the same behavior can lead to costs in another. It follows that a beneficial learning adaptation can become maladaptive if the conditions of the environment change. In Aim 2, we introduce a reliable-to-unreliable and unreliable-to-reliable change in the reliability of help, such that a social partner who was helpful before learning stops responding to children’s bids for help (and vice versa). Here, we test whether an environmental change can lead children to use mismatched learning strategies that, in turn, lead to suboptimal learning outcomes. In Aim 3, we construct a computational model that describes environmental adaptation in children’s learning strategies according to the principles of utility-based social reasoning, wherein children consider the behavior of their social partners to maximize the expected utility (i.e., benefits net of costs) of a given learning decision. We test model predictions against children’s behavior in the experiments. Taken together, this work will provide key empirical data and a computational model to advance our understanding of how children learn within diverse social contexts. The long-term objective of this proposal is to generate novel insights into the ways in which children, particularly those who live in less supportive environments, make decisions during social learning that shape their future learning outcomes. Findings have promise to inform interventions that improve social learning interactions as a means to support early education.