Children consider more options than adults do, and the development of working memory may help explain why this behavior fosters learning. The findings of a new study were published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Children often continue to explore the world long after an adult would have already made a decision. While this might seem inefficient, it can be beneficial when a developing mind still has so much to learn.
The article was co-authored by Vladimir M. Sloutsky, a professor of psychology at Ohio State University, along with Qianqian Wan and Brandon M. Turner. They examine why young children constantly try out different options instead of settling on the best one they have already found.
The authors describe the “exploration-exploitation” dilemma. Exploration involves testing a new option without knowing the outcome, whereas exploiting known methods means choosing what has worked in the past.
Neither approach is always best. Trying something new can take time and may not yield the desired results, yet consistently choosing familiar options can cause a person to miss out on superior alternatives or valuable information.
“Children tend to explore the world around them extensively, and despite the associated costs, exploration offers significant benefits—especially during early development, when they know very little,” Sloutsky said. “These are individuals who are learning how to be human.”
The article focuses on working memory, which helps people hold and use information over short periods while performing a task.
In adults, working memory helps maintain goals and focus attention on the most important information.
As people make more choices, they remember what worked previously. Gradually, they pay less attention to less successful options and focus more on the best choice.
In children, this system is still developing. Because working memory is not yet fully developed, children may find it harder to focus on the options that previously yielded the best results.
“Since children’s working memory systems aren’t fully developed, they tend to explore and re-evaluate information, especially in less familiar situations,” said Sloutsky. “An adult quickly decides that one thing is worth paying attention to while another isn’t. Children don’t make such selective decisions quite as quickly.”
The key idea is that children aren’t simply making random choices. If they haven’t tried a particular option for a while, they may not remember it clearly. That option might seem new or uncertain again, making it more likely that they will return to it. This means their choices follow a specific pattern rather than occurring entirely at random.
“Because children love exploring the world around them, they might not immediately maximize the benefits of the best option, but they also won’t lose out if the environment changes,” said Sloutsky. “This is where exploratory behavior becomes highly beneficial, protecting them from getting trapped by their own knowledge during the early stages of development.”
The authors tested this idea using results from earlier experiments described in the paper.
Adults played a game with four choices, while five-year-olds played the same game without any additional tasks. Each choice was represented by a cartoon character associated with a reward of one, two, three, or ten pieces of candy. The goal was to collect as much candy as possible across 100 trials.
Some adults also listened to a stream of numbers while playing. They had to respond whenever two odd numbers appeared in a row, forcing their working memory to handle two tasks simultaneously. Adults who did not have to perform this additional task quickly learned to choose the creature that yielded 10 candies and stopped switching between them so often. Adults with active working memory constantly tried new options and switched more frequently; consequently, their choices came to resemble those of five-year-olds much more closely.
The team also used computer models to determine which type of decision-making best matched each person’s choices. The modeling tested whether people primarily chose the best reward, returned to options they hadn’t tried in a while, or made choices at random.
For all adults who did not perform the additional memory task, the model that prioritized the highest reward was the best fit.
For five-year-olds and adults with active working memory, a model that revisited less recently used options was a better fit, indicating that their choices still followed a specific pattern.
Similar results were obtained in a separate learning task. Adults facing a high working memory load attended to a greater number of features, much like the broader attentional focus observed in young children.
The study results suggest that working memory helps adults focus on options that have previously proven successful. When working memory is taxed, adults may try out more options, but their choices are not merely random.
Adults are adept at quickly focusing on key information once they grasp what matters. For young children, however, focusing too quickly can mean missing important details.
The authors suggest that children’s broader attentional focus may actually facilitate learning. By noticing more details, they can gain a better understanding of new situations. Sloutsky noted that this phase can be challenging for parents, as children learn a vast amount about the world around them in a short time.
“This is where exploratory behavior becomes highly beneficial, preventing them from getting trapped by their own knowledge during early development,” Sloutsky said. “In the first year of life, children are virtually immobile; for the next three years, they are disorganized; for the next 15 years, they are prone to extreme risk-taking; and for the first 22 years, they are dependent on others.”
“It is extremely costly, and those costs fall primarily on caregivers,” Sloutsky said. “But it is necessary, given how much children need to learn. Organisms with large brains have a prolonged period of immaturity, which allows for flexibility in the learning process.” The article does not prove that working memory development is the sole reason children try out more options. Curiosity and less consistent decision-making may also play a role. There is another limitation as well: using adult working memory capacity as a benchmark for comparison with childhood development does not fully reflect how a child’s brain actually develops.
The study results suggest that weaker attentional control may contribute to children continuing to consider various options. However, this does not mean that distraction is always beneficial or that all children explore the world for the same reason.
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