Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34127657›Full record

ArticleNature communications2021

Children's exploratory play tracks the discriminability of hypotheses.

Max H Siegel, Rachel W Magid, Madeline Pelz, Joshua B Tenenbaum, Laura E Schulz

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
7citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

7 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Seeing and understanding epistemic actions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023
    Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Max H Siegel *Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. maxs@mit.edu.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4510-3145
Rachel W Magid *Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Madeline PelzMassachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Joshua B TenenbaumMassachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Laura E SchulzMassachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. lschulz@mit.edu.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2981-8039

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Effective curiosity-driven learning requires recognizing that the value of evidence for testing hypotheses depends on what other hypotheses are under consideration. Do we intuitively represent the discriminability of hypotheses? Here we show children alternative hypotheses for the contents of a box and then shake the box (or allow children to shake it themselves) so they can hear the sound of the contents. We find that children are able to compare the evidence they hear with imagined evidence they do not hear but might have heard under alternative hypotheses. Children (N = 160; mean: 5 years and 4 months) prefer easier discriminations (Experiments 1-3) and explore longer given harder ones (Experiments 4-7). Across 16 contrasts, children's exploration time quantitatively tracks the discriminability of heard evidence from an unheard alternative. The results are consistent with the idea that children have an "intuitive psychophysics": children represent their own perceptual abilities and explore longer when hypotheses are harder to distinguish.

Indexed as

Child DevelopmentExploratory BehaviorLearningChildChild, PreschoolHumansModels, TheoreticalPsychophysics

Identifiers

PMID34127657
PMCPMC8203670

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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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.