ABSTRACT

Sometimes we should persist to succeed. But other times it might be wiser to give up on the task at hand and focus our energy on something new. Knowing whether a task is worth the effort potentially requires multiple capacities, including sensitivity to one’s own likelihood to succeed on the current problem, the associated costs with continuing to pursue it, and evaluation of opportunities for reward from the success. But these capacities may be particularly challenging for young children. Here we ask how young children are sensitive to cognitive cost (one’s capacity and the opportunity cost of persisting) and reward probability (how likely they are to receive a reward when succeeding) when making decisions. Using a simple counting task, we showed that 4- to 5-year-old children in the US (N = 40, pre-registered) chose to give up more when the task was more difficult (and therefore cognitively more costly), especially when the probability of reward was low. These results extend previous findings and suggest the ability to consider and evaluate cognitive cost and reward probability may be in place by 4 years of age.

摘要

有时候我们应该坚持才能成功。但其他时候，放弃手头的任务并将精力集中在新的事情上可能更明智。了解一项任务是否值得付出努力可能需要多种能力，包括对自己在当前问题上取得成功的可能性的敏感性、继续追求它的相关成本以及对从成功中获得奖励的机会的评估。但这些能力对于幼儿来说可能尤其具有挑战性。在这里我们问幼儿在做决定时对认知成本（一个人的能力和坚持的机会成本）和奖励概率（成功时获得奖励的可能性有多大）敏感。通过简单的计数任务，我们发现美国 4 至 5 岁的儿童（N = 40，当任务更困难（因此认知成本更高）时，尤其是当奖励概率较低时，（预先注册的）会选择放弃更多。这些结果扩展了之前的发现，并表明考虑和评估认知成本和奖励概率的能力可能在 4 岁时就具备了。