The DOI matches its Crossref record; 119 of the 119 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Childhood as a solution to explore–exploit tensions
Open accessAbstract
I argue that the evolution of our life history, with its distinctively long, protected human childhood, allows an early period of broad hypothesis search and exploration, before the demands of goal-directed exploitation set in. This cognitive profile is also found in other animals and is associated with early behaviours such as neophilia and play. I relate this developmental pattern to computational ideas about explore–exploit trade-offs, search and sampling, and to neuroscience findings. I also present several lines of empirical evidence suggesting that young human learners are highly exploratory, both in terms of their search for external information and their search through hypothesis spaces. In fact, they are sometimes more exploratory than older learners and adults. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals’.
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Cites
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Cited by
Environmental influences on the pace of brain development
Tooley, U. A., Bassett, D. S., & Mackey, A. P. (2021) · Nature reviews. Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/s41583-021-00457-5 · Cited by 488
Play in predictive minds: A cognitive theory of play.
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Dorst, K. (2021) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3918498 · Cited by 108
The Growing Importance of Decision-Making on the Job
Deming, D. (2021) · doi:10.3386/w28733 · Cited by 52
Curiosity: primate neural circuits for novelty and information seeking
Monosov, I. E. (2024) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/s41583-023-00784-9 · Cited by 44
Metadata
- Authors
- Gopnik, A.
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2020-06
- Volume
- 375
- Issue
- 1803
- Pages
- 20190502
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- OpenAlex
- W3031701158
- Cited by
- 319
- References
- 119
- FWCI
- 56.01
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
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