scholarly journals Decision-making flexibility in New Caledonian crows, young children and adult humans in a multi-dimensional tool-use task

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. e0219874 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael Miller ◽  
Romana Gruber ◽  
Anna Frohnwieser ◽  
Martina Schiestl ◽  
Sarah A. Jelbert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Adult Humans ◽  
New Caledonian Crows

scholarly journals Decision-making flexibility in New Caledonian crows, young children and adult humans in a multi-dimensional tool-use task

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael Miller ◽  
Romana Gruber ◽  
Anna Frohnwieser ◽  
Martina Schiestl ◽  
Sarah A. Jelbert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Food Item ◽  
Work Effort ◽  
Pongo Abelii ◽  
Adult Humans ◽  
New Caledonian Crows ◽  
Multiple Variables ◽  
Corvus Moneduloides ◽  
Decision Making Tool

AbstractThe ability to make profitable decisions in natural foraging contexts may be influenced by an additional requirement of tool-use, due to increased levels of relational complexity and additional work-effort imposed by tool-use, compared with simply choosing between an immediate and delayed food item. We examined the flexibility for making the most profitable decisions in a multi-dimensional tool-use task, involving different apparatuses, tools and rewards of varying quality, in 3-5-year-old children, adult humans and tool-making New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides). We also compared our results to previous studies on habitually tool-making orangutans (Pongo abelii) and non-tool-making Goffin’s cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana). Adult humans, cockatoos and crows, though not children and orangutans, did not select a tool when it was not necessary, which was the more profitable choice in this situation. Adult humans, orangutans and cockatoos, though not crows and children, were able to refrain from selecting non-functional tools. By contrast, the birds, though not primates tested, struggled to attend to multiple variables - where two apparatuses, two tools and two reward qualities were presented simultaneously - without extended experience. These findings indicate: (1) in a similar manner to humans and orangutans, New Caledonian crows and Goffin’s cockatoos can flexibly make profitable decisions in some decision-making tool-use tasks, though the birds may struggle when tasks become more complex; (2) children and orangutans may have a bias to use tools in situations where adults and other tool-making species do not.

Influence of Developmental Level of Desire Taking on Affective Decision Making in Young Children

2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (10) ◽  
pp. 958-966
Author(s):  
Jing Chen ◽  
Xin-Yi Sun ◽  
Hong Li ◽  
Xiu-Li Li
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Developmental Level

Parental Decision-Making for Surgery and Anesthesia in Young Children

2021 ◽  
pp. 019394592110216
Author(s):  
Audrey Rosenblatt ◽  
Michael Kremer ◽  
Olimpia Paun ◽  
Barbara Swanson ◽  
Rebekah Hamilton ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Theory Analysis ◽  
Parental Decision ◽  
Parental Decision Making ◽  
Health Care Context ◽  
The Relationship

Millions of young children undergo surgery and anesthesia each year, yet there is a lack of scientific consensus about the safety of anesthesia exposure for the developing brain. Also poorly understood is parental anesthesia-related decision-making and how neurotoxicity information influences their choices. The theoretical model of parental decision-making generated in this research explicates this process. Interviews with 24 mothers yielded a theoretical framework based on their narratives developed using a qualitative grounded theory analysis. Five major themes emerged from these interviews: emotional processing, cognitive processing, relationships as resources, the mother/child dyad, and the health care context. Mothers described a non-linear, iterative process; they moved fluidly through emotional and cognitive processing supported by relationships as resources and influenced by the health care context. A key element was the subtheme of the medical translator, an individual who provided context and information. The mother/child dyad grounded the model in the relationship with the child.

Lateralized tool use in wild New Caledonian crows

2004 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robb Rutledge ◽  
Gavin R Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
New Caledonian Crows

scholarly journals Reconceptualizing civic education for young children: Recognizing embodied civic action

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-46
Author(s):  
Katherina A. Payne ◽  
Jennifer Keys Adair ◽  
Kiyomi Sanchez Suzuki Colegrove ◽  
Sunmin Lee ◽  
Anna Falkner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Head Start ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Civic Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civic Action ◽  
Civic Skills ◽  
Early Childhood Settings

Traditional conceptions of civic education for young children in the United States tend to focus on student acquisition of patriotic knowledge, that is, identifying flags and leaders, and practicing basic civic skills like voting as decision-making. The Civic Action and Young Children study sought to look beyond this narrow vision of civic education by observing, documenting, and contextualizing how young children acted on behalf of and with other people in their everyday early childhood settings. In the following paper, we offer examples from three Head Start classrooms to demonstrate multiple ways that young children act civically in everyday ways. When classrooms and teachers afford young children more agency, children’s civic capabilities expand, and they are able to act on behalf of and with their community. Rather than teaching children about democracy and citizenship, we argue for an embodied, lived experience for young children.

scholarly journals Tool use by wild New Caledonian crows Corvus moneduloides at natural foraging sites

2010 ◽  
Vol 277 (1686) ◽  
pp. 1377-1385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas A. Bluff ◽  
Jolyon Troscianko ◽  
Alex A. S. Weir ◽  
Alex Kacelnik ◽  
Christian Rutz
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
New Caledonian Crows ◽  
Corvus Moneduloides

scholarly journals Systematic Exploration and Uncertainty Dominate Young Children’s Choices

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel J. Blanco ◽  
Vladimir Sloutsky
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Exploration And Exploitation ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Reward Seeking ◽  
Systematic Fashion ◽  
Systematic Exploration ◽  
Competing Demands ◽  
Exploration Exploitation

Organisms need to constantly balance the competing demands of gathering information and using previously acquired information to obtain rewarding outcomes (i.e., the “exploration- exploitation” dilemma). Exploration is critical to obtain information to discover how the world works, which should be particularly important for young children. While studies have shown that young children explore in response to surprising events, little is known about how they balance exploration and exploitation across multiple decisions or about how this process changes with development. In this study we compare decision-making patterns of children and adults and evaluate the relative influences of reward-seeking, random exploration, and systematic switching (which approximates uncertainty-directed exploration). In a second experiment we directly test the effect of uncertainty on children’s choices. Influential models of decision-making generally describe systematic exploration as a computationally refined capacity that relies on top-down cognitive control. We demonstrate that (1) systematic patterns dominate young children’s behavior (facilitating exploration), despite protracted development of cognitive control, and (2) that uncertainty plays a major, but complicated, role in determining children’s choices. We conclude that while young children’s immature top-down control should hinder adult-like systematic exploration, other mechanisms may pick up the slack, facilitating broad information gathering in a systematic fashion to build a foundation of knowledge for use later in life.

scholarly journals Attentional mechanisms drive systematic exploration in young children

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel J. Blanco ◽  
Vladimir Sloutsky
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Information Gathering ◽  
Choice Task ◽  
Attention Allocation ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Distributed Attention ◽  
Systematic Exploration ◽  
The World ◽  
Attentional Mechanisms

Exploration is critical for discovering how the world works. Exploration should be particularlyvaluable for young children, who have little knowledge about the world. Theories of decision- making describe systematic exploration as being primarily driven by top-down cognitive control, which is immature in young children. Recent research suggests that a type of systematic exploration predominates in young children’s choices, despite immature control, suggesting that it may be driven by different mechanisms. We hypothesize that young children’s tendency to distribute attention widely promotes elevated exploration, and that interrupting distributed attention allocation through bottom-up attentional capture would also disrupt systematic exploration. We test this hypothesis by manipulating saliency of the options in a simple choice task. Saliency disrupted systematic exploration, thus indicating that attentional mechanisms may drive children’s systematic exploratory behavior. We suggest that both may be part of a larger tendency toward broad information gathering in young children.

Some Empirical Results Concerning Causal Learning and Representation

2021 ◽  
pp. 169-226
Author(s):  
James Woodward
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Nonhuman Primate ◽  
Causal Learning ◽  
Additional Structure ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
Adult Human ◽  
Causal Representation ◽  
Adult Humans ◽  
Causal Cognition ◽  
Over Time

This chapter explores some empirical results bearing on the descriptive and normative adequacy of different accounts of causal learning and representation. It begins by contrasting associative accounts with accounts that attribute additional structure to causal representation, arguing in favor of the latter. Empirical results supporting the claim that adult humans often reason about causal relationships using interventionist counterfactuals are presented. Contrasts between human and nonhuman primate causal cognition are also discussed, as well as some experiments concerning causal cognition in young children. A proposal about what is involved in having adult human causal representations is presented and some issues about how these might develop over time are explored.

scholarly journals New Caledonian crows plan for specific future tool use

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1938) ◽  
pp. 20201490
Author(s):  
M. Boeckle ◽  
M. Schiestl ◽  
A. Frohnwieser ◽  
R. Gruber ◽  
R. Miller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
Convergent Evolution ◽  
Food Item ◽  
Common Ancestor ◽  
Research Effort ◽  
Human Intelligence ◽  
Future Events ◽  
New Caledonian Crows ◽  
Future Task ◽  
The Right

The ability to plan for future events is one of the defining features of human intelligence. Whether non-human animals can plan for specific future situations remains contentious: despite a sustained research effort over the last two decades, there is still no consensus on this question. Here, we show that New Caledonian crows can use tools to plan for specific future events. Crows learned a temporal sequence where they were (a) shown a baited apparatus, (b) 5 min later given a choice of five objects and (c) 10 min later given access to the apparatus. At test, these crows were presented with one of two tool–apparatus combinations. For each combination, the crows chose the right tool for the right future task, while ignoring previously useful tools and a low-value food item. This study establishes that planning for specific future tool use can evolve via convergent evolution, given that corvids and humans shared a common ancestor over 300 million years ago, and offers a route to mapping the planning capacities of animals.

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