Decomposing decision-making in preschoolers: Making decisions under ambiguity versus risk

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Real-world decision-making relies on a complex interplay of cognitive abilities.
• Understanding these abilities in early development is crucial for cognitive frameworks.
• The Preschool Gambling Task (PGT) is a tool for assessing decision-making in young children.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the specific cognitive abilities underpinning performance on the Preschool Gambling Task (PGT).
• To examine these abilities within an integrative decision-making framework.
• To explore the roles of implicit and explicit processes in children's decision-making.

Main Methods:

• Administered the PGT and four novel decision-making tasks to 144 preschoolers.
• Tasks assessed decision-making under conditions of ambiguity and risk.
• Analyzed contributions of various cognitive abilities to PGT performance.

Main Results:

• Learning from feedback, maintaining stable preferences, and integrating losses/gains significantly predicted PGT performance.
• Children's awareness of their choices on the PGT added further explanatory variance.
• Results suggest both implicit and explicit cognitive processes are engaged during PGT performance.

Conclusions:

• The findings partially support an integrative decision-making framework for preschoolers.
• Multiple cognitive abilities contribute to individual differences in early decision-making.
• Both conscious awareness and unconscious processing influence children's choices in the PGT.