Children perform extensive information gathering when it is not costly

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Decision Science

Background:

• Decision-making under uncertainty is common.
• Information gathering is crucial for improving choices, especially for youth with limited world knowledge.
• Understanding developmental changes in information-seeking is important.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how information-gathering strategies change from childhood to adolescence.
• To identify age-related differences in decision-making under uncertainty.
• To explore the underlying mechanisms of these differences.

Main Methods:

• An information sampling task was administered to 107 participants (children aged 8–9, early adolescents 12–13, and late adolescents 16–17).
• Computational modeling was used to analyze decision-making processes.
• Behavioral data on information acquisition and choice were collected.

Main Results:

• Children gathered significantly more information than adolescents when information was free.
• Adolescents gathered less information compared to children, particularly when costs were involved.
• Computational modeling revealed that children perceive lower subjective costs for information gathering.

Conclusions:

• Children utilize extensive information gathering to compensate for limited knowledge and neurocognitive constraints.
• This developmental pattern of information gathering may inform understanding of aberrant information seeking in psychiatric conditions.
• Age-related differences in subjective cost perception influence information-seeking behavior.