Decision-making requires balancing exploration with exploitation, yet children are highly exploratory, with exploration decreasing with development. Less is known about what drives these changes. We examined the development of decision-making in 188 three- to eight-year-old children (M = 64 months; 98 girls) and 26 adults (M = 19 years; 13 women). Children were recruited from ethnically diverse suburban middle-class neighborhoods of Columbus, Ohio, USA. Results indicate that mature reward-based choices emerge relatively late in development, with children tending to over-explore. Computational modeling suggests that this exploration is systematic rather than random, as children tend to avoid repeating choices made on the previous trial. This pattern of exploration (reminiscent of novelty preference) decreased with development, whereas the tendency to exploit increased.

中文翻译：

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探索、开发和开发：决策的发展转变

决策需要平衡探索与利用，而儿童的探索性很强，随着发展，探索会减少。对于驱动这些变化的因素知之甚少。我们研究了 188 名 3 至 8 岁儿童（M  = 64 个月；98 名女孩）和 26 名成人（M  = 19 岁；13 名女性）的决策发展情况。儿童是从美国俄亥俄州哥伦布市郊区的不同种族中产阶级社区招募的。结果表明，成熟的基于奖励的选择在发展过程中出现得相对较晚，儿童往往会过度探索。计算模型表明这种探索是系统的而不是随机的，因为孩子们倾向于避免重复在之前的试验中做出的选择。这种探索模式（让人想起新奇的偏好）随着发展而减少，而利用的倾向则增加。