Childhood adversity can have wide-ranging and long-lasting effects on later life. But what
are the mechanisms that are responsible for these effects? This article brings together the …

The past decade has seen the emergence of the use of reinforcement learning models to
study developmental change in value-based learning. It is unclear, however, whether these …

In everyday conversations, humans can take on different roles and adapt their vocabulary to
their chosen roles. We explore whether LLMs can take on, that is impersonate, different roles …

Early in development, the process of exploration helps children gather new information that
fosters learning about the world. Yet, it is unclear how childhood experiences may influence …

From an early age, children need to gather information to learn about their environment.
Deciding which knowledge to pursue can be difficult because information can serve several …

Human development is often described as a 'cooling off'process, analogous to stochastic
optimization algorithms that implement a gradual reduction in randomness over time. Yet …

Intuitively, children appear to be more exploratory than adults, and this exploration seems to
help children learn,. However, there have been few clear tests of these ideas. We test …

Highlights•Explanation-seeking curiosity (ESC) motivates the pursuit of explanations.•ESC is
highly selective: it is not triggered merely by ignorance or uncertainty.•Children can acquire …

Are young children just random explorers who learn serendipitously? Or are even young
children guided by uncertainty‐directed sampling, seeking to explore in a systematic …

Cognitive development is marked by age-related improvements across a number of
domains, as young children perform worse than their older counterparts on most tasks …