Childhood as a solution to explore–exploit tensions

• Published in: Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences Vol. 375; no. 1803; p. 20190502
• Main Author: Gopnik, Alison
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England The Royal Society 20.07.2020
• Subjects: Adolescent; Age Factors; Child; Child, Preschool; Cognition; Exploratory Behavior; Humans; Infant; Infant, Newborn; Learning; Review; explore–exploit; development; life history
• ISSN: 0962-8436; 1471-2970; 1471-2970
• DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0502

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’.