Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Introduction to Learning

Introduction to Learning

Learning is the process of acquiring knowledge or skills through practice or experience, leading to long-lasting behavioral changes. This acquisition occurs through interaction with the environment and requires practice or experience. For instance, mastering a skill such as surfing requires considerable practice and experience, highlighting the essential role of repeated interactions with the environment in learning.
In contrast to learned behaviors, unlearned behaviors such as crying, sexual...

Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development from Childhood into Adulthood

Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development from Childhood into Adulthood

Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development emphasizes the role of thinking in a child's learning process, suggesting that children are naturally curious about their environment. His approach to development is discontinuous, proposing that cognitive abilities progress through distinct stages, each with unique characteristics. Central to Piaget's theory is schemata—mental structures that allow individuals to understand and interpret the world.
Schemata: Building Blocks of Knowledge

Purposive Learning

Purposive Learning

E. C. Tolman emphasized the purposiveness of behavior — the idea that much of our behavior is goal-directed. For instance, employees who aim for a promotion work diligently to meet their targets. Tolman argued that when classical conditioning and operant conditioning occur, the organism acquires certain expectations. In classical conditioning, a child might fear a dog because they expect it to bite. In operant conditioning, a person might consistently work overtime because they expect a...

Cognitive Learning

Cognitive Learning

Cognitive learning is based on purposive behavior, incidental learning, and insight learning.
E. C. Tolman's theory of purposive behavior emphasizes that much behavior is goal-directed. He argued that to understand behavior, we must look at the entire sequence of actions leading to a goal. For instance, high school students study hard, not just due to past reinforcement but also to achieve the goal of getting into a good college.
Tolman introduced the idea that behavior is influenced by...

The Nativist Approach

The Nativist Approach

The nativist approach to infant cognitive development proposes that infants are born with inherent knowledge structures that allow them to interpret the world almost immediately. This perspective contrasts with earlier developmental theories, such as those proposed by Jean Piaget, which emphasized a more gradual acquisition of cognitive abilities through interaction with the environment. One key concept in this approach is object permanence — the understanding that objects continue to...

Language Development

Language Development

Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
The critical period for language acquisition suggests that the ability to acquire language is at its peak early in life. As people age, this proficiency decreases. Language development begins very...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Domain generality is an emergent, not inherent, property of metacognition.

Nature human behaviour·2026

Same author

Children spontaneously discover efficient solutions to a difficult sorting task.

Nature human behaviour·2025

Same author

Anticipating disagreement enhances source memory in English- and Turkish-speaking preschool children.

Developmental psychology·2025

Same author

Children Use the Relative Confidence of People With Conflicting Perspectives to Form Their Own Beliefs.

Developmental science·2025

Same author

Do Young Children Use Verbal Disfluency as a Cue to Their Own Confidence?

Developmental science·2025

Same author

Designing, implementing and evaluating multidisciplinary healthcare training programmes in the wartime humanitarian context of Ukraine.

Emergency medicine journal : EMJ·2025

Same journal

Geographical psychology: Spatial variation in psychological phenomena and their consequences.

Trends in cognitive sciences·2026

Same journal

Multi-brain neurofeedback: what are we training for?

Trends in cognitive sciences·2026

Same journal

The developing vocal self.

Trends in cognitive sciences·2026

Same journal

Searching beyond decrements: Attentional guidance across the adult lifespan.

Trends in cognitive sciences·2026

Same journal

Looking into working memory through micro eye movements.

Trends in cognitive sciences·2026

Same journal

Timescapes of non-human experience.

Trends in cognitive sciences·2026

See all related articles

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Aug 29, 2025

Measuring Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Domains in School-Aged Children Via an Online Platform and Neuroimaging Techniques

Measuring Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Domains in School-Aged Children Via an Online Platform and Neuroimaging Techniques

Published on: June 30, 2020

Learning with certainty in childhood.

Carolyn Baer¹, Celeste Kidd¹

¹Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

|September 9, 2022

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Certainty guides learning by helping individuals maintain beliefs when confident and seek information when uncertain. This metacognitive strategy is evident even in infants and animals, indicating its fundamental role in cognitive development.

Keywords:

certainty development learning metacognition

More Related Videos

Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task

Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task

Published on: June 1, 2015

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Published on: April 19, 2017

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Aug 29, 2025

Measuring Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Domains in School-Aged Children Via an Online Platform and Neuroimaging Techniques

Measuring Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Domains in School-Aged Children Via an Online Platform and Neuroimaging Techniques

Published on: June 30, 2020

Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task

Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task

Published on: June 1, 2015

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Published on: April 19, 2017

Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Cognitive Science
Comparative Cognition

Background:

Learners utilize certainty as a key factor in directing their learning processes.
Existing beliefs are maintained when learners feel certain, whereas uncertainty prompts information seeking.

Purpose of the Study:

To review developmental evidence on the role of certainty in guiding learning strategies.
To explore whether this metacognitive strategy requires reportable processing.
To examine the presence of certainty-driven learning in nonverbal infants and nonhuman animals.

Main Methods:

Review of existing developmental research on metacognition and learning.
Analysis of behavioral evidence from human infants and nonhuman animal studies.
Examination of how certainty influences information seeking, attention, and belief integration.

Main Results:

Uncertainty triggers adaptive strategies such as help-seeking, information search, or disengagement.
Certainty directs attention and active learning, facilitating the comparison and integration of beliefs.
The metacognitive strategy of using certainty to guide learning does not necessitate reportable processing.

Conclusions:

Certainty functions as a continuous, domain-general signal of belief quality from early life.
This metacognitive mechanism is fundamental across species and developmental stages.
Understanding certainty's role is crucial for comprehending cognitive development and learning.