ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2020
Childhood as a solution to explore-exploit tensions.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 95 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
95 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A review on exploration-exploitation trade-off in psychiatric disorders.BMC psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Nature play in early childhood education: A systematic review and meta ethnography of qualitative research.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Pooled it
- Teaching or learning from baby: Inducing explicit parenting goals influences caregiver intrusiveness.Developmental psychology · 2023Trial
- Working memory, exploration, and cognitive development.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2026Review
- Drivers of exploration early in development: Perceptual novelty rather than a quest for information.Developmental psychology · 2026Article
- The Emerging Neurobiology of Psychedelics: Critical Periods, Metaplasticity, and Extracellular Matrix Remodeling.Annual review of neuroscience · 2026Review
- Infants and Mobiles: Developing an Understanding of Cause and Effect.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Navigating Knowledge: Effects of State Curiosity on Children's Word Learning and Information Seeking.Developmental science · 2026Article
- The Development of Selective Attention in Children's Emotion Reasoning.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Trusting Wisely? Developmental Changes in How Children Learn and Adapt to Partner Trustworthiness.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Working memory shapes information sampling and attention allocation across development.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2026Article
- Learning from boundlessness: epistemic shifts towards a holistic worldview following psychedelic experiences.Npj mental health research · 2026Article
- Beyond Cognitive Load Theory: Why Learning Needs More than Memory Management.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- Cognition varies across the calendar year in multiple large-scale datasets.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Preschoolers' Win-Stay/Lose-Shift Strategy Use in the Children's Gambling Task.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Computational Approaches Reveal Developmental Shifts in Exploratory Play.Developmental science · 2025Article
- Atypical tool and object use in wild immature chimpanzees reveals developmental pathways to innovation.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- Individual differences in sequential decision-making.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Social learning leads to inflexible strategy use in children across three societies.Scientific reports · 2025Article
35 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.