Exploration and Play Flashcards
(18 cards)
Exploration
Observable behavioural manifestation of curiosity
* Intrinsically motivated, active seeking of information for its own sake
How Do Children Explore?
- Visual: Preferred looking, gaze following, etc.
- Manual/Haptic: Touching, grasping, etc.
- Spatial/Locomotor: Moving towards interesting information
- Social-Communicative: Social referencing, pointing, etc.
Independent and Social Means to Exploration
Physical: Object knowledge, causal relation, statistical learning
* Autonomous exploration: Insight into patterns of information
Social: Others’ knowledge, intentionality, context of learning
Piaget’s Cognitive Construction of Reality
Learning though active self-discovery and exploration
* Learning only when developmentally ready
Vygotsky’s Social Construction of Reality
Learning through others’ guidance or instruction
* Cognitive development can be accelerated
Scaffolding May Promote Exploration
Vygotsky-esque
Divergent thinking measure: The number of different actions children produced that had not been modelled
* 2 yo imitated high level of divergent thinking on the Unusual Box Test after seeing adult demonstration
Scaffolding promotes learning and exploration
Exploration in Later Childhood
- Competence in active learning, driven by intrinsic motivation
- Increase in selectivity, efficiency, and effectiveness
- Decrease of random exploration and repetitive sampling patterns
- Asking better questions and seeking better explanations
- Developing personal interests
- Motivation, emotion, and self-regulation skills
Why Do Children Explore: 4 Approaches to Curiosity
Drive
- Species general, basic drive view
- Aligned with other biological drives (hunger, thirst, etc.)
- Behaviourism: Explained in terms of reflexes
- Low-Level Heuristics: Infants’ gazing at areas of high visual contrast, motion onset, human faces
Adverse Experience: Uncertainty associated with need to resolve it to restore balance
Pleasant Experience: Spontaneous engagement in exploration, initiating state of uncertainty
* Study on monkeys that shown that they would generate a state of uncertainty even when already satisfied
Why Do Children Explore: 4 Approaches to Curiosity
Incongruency
Curiosity as a response to the pronounced preference for novelty, ambiguity, and complexity
* E.g. Violation of Expectations Scenarios
* Seeking information and explanation to resolve uncertainty, independently and socially
* Asking 5W questions, offering own explanations of phenomena
Incongruency
Sim & Xu (2017)
Marbles in a transparent box
* Uniform vs variable trial
* Infants preferentially look at, approach, and explore the unexpected, low probability
Why Do Children Explore: 4 Approaches to Curiosity
Information Gap
Curiosity allows to close an identified gap in knowledge on a particular topic
* Directed acquisition of specific and goal-directed knowledge
Cannot become curious about something without any prior knowledge about it
* The size of the gap affects curiosity
* Learner needs to be aware of the gap to attempt to fill it
* Does not apply to early infancy: No studies show infants have the self-awareness to know about knowledge gaps
* “I don’t know what I don’t know”
Why Do Children Explore: 4 Approaches to Curiosity
Learning Progress
Curiosity as a function of both the availability of information and the internal state of the learner
* Maximising learning by reducing uncertainty
* Optimal and effective progress in learning
* Learning is intrinsically rewarding
* No need for conscious awareness of information gaps
* Computational and robotic models of information search and sample
Kid et al. (2014): The Goldilocks Effect
Infants prefer visual and auditory sequence of intermediate complexity
* Neither too highly predictable nor highly unpredictable
* Lost attention in max or min predictable situations, but sustained attention during intermediate predictability
What is Play?
- Voluntary behaviour happening in a safe environment
- Not functional in the immediately observed context
- No obvious benefit in why we chose to play/not a rational behaviour
- Includes elements that are exaggerates, segmented, and non-sequential in relation to the functional behaviour
- Shows a characteristic age progression
- Peaks in childhood and declines with age
Evolutionary Basis of Play
- Play is costly: Takes up considerable time and energy
- Universal: Encouraged by parents and occurs in all cultures
- Adaotive activity due to long periods of immaturity and dependency
- Allows to gain physical, social, and cognitive skills necessary for adult life
- Opportunity to practice in risk-free environment
- Evolution of play may be linked to evolution of intelligence
- Most intelligent animals play: Birds, mammals, bees
Play
Social Classifications
- Solitary play: No social interaction
- Rough and tumble play: Social limited to physical interaction
- Parallel play: Play independently but in same environment
- Associative play: Playing with same set of toys next to each other but not together
- Cooperative play: Play together
- Guided play: Taught or observed
Play
Cognitive Complexity Classification
- Functional play: Locomotor
- To figure out function
- Constructive play: Object play
- Pretend play: Dramatic, fantasy
- More symbolic and socially complex
- Formal games with rules: Organised games with procedures and penalities
Unique Values of Pretend Play
HIstorically viewed as an immature mode of thinking
* Involves making things up from scratch or combining elements in novel ways
* Open ended, not a goal directed activity
- Vital for development of higher order cognition, emotional skills, and socialisation
- Links with later measures of intelligence and creativity
