Children's Choice Behavior Research Articles

Extending a misallocation model to children's choice behavior.

Nonhuman animal models show that reinforcers control behavior through what they signal about the likelihood of future events, but such control is generally imperfect. Imperfect control by the relation between past and likely future events may result from imperfect detection of those events as they occur, which result in imperfect detection of the relation between events. Such an approach would suggest the involvement of more complex psychological processes like memory in simple operant learning. We extended a research paradigm previously examined with nonhuman animals to test the ability of a quantitative model that assumes imperfect control by the relation between events arises because of (a) occasional misallocation of reinforcers to the wrong response, causing imperfect control by the relation between events; and (b) a tendency to explore or exploit which is independent of the relation between events. Children played a game in which one of two different responses could produce a reinforcer. The likelihood of a reinforcer for the same response that produced the last one varied across three conditions (.1, .5, .9). As with nonhuman animal models, children's choices followed these probabilities closely but not perfectly, suggesting strong control by what one reinforcer signals about subsequent reinforcers. Choice was well described by the quantitative model. This same model also provides a good description of nonhuman animal-model data, suggesting fundamentally similar mechanisms of control across species. These findings suggest reinforcers control behavior to the extent the relation between reinforcers can be detected-that is, simple operant learning may be more complex than is typically assumed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Two-year-olds use adults' but not peers' points.

In the current study, 24- to 27-month-old children (N = 37) used pointing gestures in a cooperative object choice task with either peer or adult partners. When indicating the location of a hidden toy, children pointed equally accurately for adult and peer partners but more often for adult partners. When choosing from one of three hiding places, children used adults' pointing to find a hidden toy significantly more often than they used peers'. In interaction with peers, children's choice behavior was at chance level. These results suggest that toddlers ascribe informative value to adults' but not peers' pointing gestures, and highlight the role of children's social expectations in their communicative development.

Sensitivity of children's behavior to probabilistic reward: effects of a decreasing-ratio lottery system on math performance.

Probabilistic reward has been shown to affect children's choice behavior in game-like activities. We examined the effects of a lottery system containing progressively lower exchange ratios on children's completion of math problems. Two of the 3 children completed problems above baseline levels until the chance of exchange dropped to 25%. This study describes a potentially useful method for examining reinforcement schedules in applied settings and extends previous research on probabilities of reinforcement.

Differences in preschool children's conceptual strategies when thinking about animate entities and artifacts.

Two-, 3-, and 4-year-old children viewed 10 stimulus sets. Each set contained a sample picture (e.g., a dog), a basic-level taxonomic match (e.g., another dog), a thematic match (e.g., a bone), and an irrelevant match (e.g., a pen). The children were asked to choose a match that "goes with" each sample. Sample pictures were either animate entities or artifacts. The children's choice behavior indicated that a shift occurs between 3 and 4 years of age from a taxonomic bias to a thematic bias and that, at both ages, animate sample stimuli enhance the children's tendency to adopt thematic conceptual strategies. These data are consistent with recent suggestions that thematic thinking presupposes basic-level taxonomic thinking during early conceptual development and that this developmental progression occurs more rapidly in some domains of knowledge than in others.

Age Differences in Children's Choice Behavior: The Impact of Available Alternatives

Age Differences in Children's Choice Behavior: The Impact of Available Alternatives

Age Differences in Children's Choice Behavior: The Impact of Available Alternatives

The authors examine how children of different ages respond to the addition of new alternatives into an existing choice set. Children 4 to 12 years of age made choices from an initial and an expanded set of products using a modified constant sum allocation procedure. The findings indicate that younger children respond differently than older children to the expansion of choice sets and that this pattern is related, in part, to age differences in children's ability to incorporate similarity judgments into the choice process.

Identification of letterlike distortions by preschool children.

In two experiments preschool children chose one of two test forms that looked like previously exposed distortions of a letterlike-form. In Exp. I a distance metric was defined to measure the physical discrepancy between forms. It was found that the distance relationship between distortions and particular test forms did not designate the children's choice behavior. In Exp. II the children were able to choose previously exposed distortions when particular test forms contained novel features. The results are related to distinctive feature and prototype hypotheses to account for children's performance in recognizing forms.

The relative effectiveness of monetary reinforcers and adult instructions in the control of children's choice behavior

During daily sessions four first-grade boys each played a two-choice marble dropping game. When one colored light was presented a plain token was dispensed as soon as S dropped a marble, and when another light was on a token with a hole in its center was delivered. During choice trials that were interspersed among single-color trials S had to choose one of the two different colored holes. At the end of each session S traded tokens with holes for pennies and then turned in the remaining plain tokens which were not exchanged for money. After S had developed a preference for the response that earned the tokens with holes (tokens that were backed up with pennies) E instructed S to try to get as many plain tokens (unexchangeable tokens) as he could. All Ss immediately switched to the response that earned unexchangeable tokens but as soon as E left they returned to choosing the backed up response. When the adult reentered, Ss again chose to work for unexchangeable tokens. Two different Es (male and female) served and the instructions of each were effective in controlling responding as long as the adult was present, except for one S who did not respond to one E, but did respond as described for the other.

Effects of uncertainty reduction, material rewards, and variety on children's choice behavior

This experiment was designed to isolate the incentive properties of uncertainty reduction (information) from those of material reward value and variety in a binary, competitive reward situation. After pretraining, fourth-grade children chose between a prescaled high-reward object and a question mark stimulus which concealed one of two lower-valued objects on each of 40 trials. The concealed objects appeared equally often for half the Ss and with a 9:1 ratio for the rest, thus, reducing one or 47 bit of uncertainty, respectively, when chosen. Ss also served as their own controls. In the control condition, stimulus color cued the identity of the concealed object, reducing uncertainty before a choice was made. As predicted, significantly more question marks were chosen when such choice reduced uncertainty ( p < .001). Evidence for the influence of relative-reward value and object novelty was obtained. Uncertainty reduction appears to have incentive value independent of other factors.

THE ROLE OF BETWEEN- AND WITHIN-SETTING IRRELEVANT DIMENSIONS IN CHILDREN'S SIMULTANEOUS DISCRIMINATION LEARNING

120 children received training on simultaneous problems differing as to the number (0, 1, or 2) of irrelevant dimensions that varied between settings and within settings to determine their effects on choice behavior. The results indicated that the concurrent presentation (within setting) of the values on an irrelevant dimension disrupted performance on the simultaneous problem relative to the successive presentation (between setting) of these values. Performance was higher on problems having 1 irrelevant dimension than on problems with 2 irrelevant dimensions, both within settings and between settings; however, neither difference was reliable. The purpose of the experiment was to determine the effects of the number of irrelevant dimensions that varied within settings and between settings on children's choice behavior in simultaneous discrimination problems. The hypothesis of stimulus interaction (Spiker 1963), an extension of Hull-Spence theory specifying a rule for combining the generalized and conditioned habits and inhibitory tendencies of stimulus components in multidimensional stimuli, predicts that a discrimination problem having an irrelevant dimension varying either between settings or within settings is more difficult to solve than the standard simultaneous problem which has no irrelevant dimensions (other than position).

Children's choice behavior as a function of stimulus change, complexity, relative novelty, surprise, and uncertainty.

Children's choice behavior as a function of stimulus change, complexity, relative novelty, surprise, and uncertainty.

IRRELEVANT STIMULUS DIMENSIONS AND CHILDREN'S PERFORMANCE ON SIMULTANEOUS DISCRIMINATION PROBLEMS

The role of the stimulus setting in determining children's choice behavior in simultaneous form-discrimination problems was investigated. The stimuli scheduled for reward and for nonreward were the same in the 3 problems. The number of irrelevant nonspatial dimensions varying within settings differed in the 3 problems, and therefore the stimuli that were paired in each setting differed from problem to problem. Nonmediational stimulusresponse theories of discrimination learning that assume that an approach response is made to 1 stimulus in a setting without regard necessarily to the other, would not predict differences in difficulty among these problems. The finding that the discrimination problems were not of equal dificulty suggests that the entire stimulus setting plays a role in determining children's choice behavior.

The effects of relative novelty on children's choice behavior

Sixty-four preschool children were each given four 1-minute (familiarization) trials with two toys, identical except for color, from each of four different sets of toys. On each trial, S chose and was given one of the two toys. Alternations of choice were significantly greater than the number expected by chance. On “Task” trials constituting fifth trials for each set, S could choose one or both of the toys used in the familiarization trials or the third, or novel, toy in the set. The novel toy was either damaged or undamaged, and the choice offered was either one-out-of-three toys or two familiar toys vs. one novel toy. All four combinations of the factors of damage and kind-of-choice offered were used to assess the extent of children's preferences for novelty. The gradient of choice of the novel toy was in direct relation to the direction of gradation of difficulty, but at all levels of difficulty, significantly more Ss chose the novel toy than would have been expected by chance. Longer latencies of choice were associated with perseveration than with alternation in familiarization trials, and with choice of familiar toys than with novel toys in “task” trials.