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Children do not exhibit ambiguity aversion despite intact familiarity bias
The phenomenon of ambiguity aversion, in which risky gambles with known probabilities are preferred over ambiguous gambles with unknown probabilities, has been thoroughly documented in adults but never measured in children. Here, we use two distinct tasks to investigate ambiguity preferences of chil...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4283450/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25601848 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01519 |
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author | Li, Rosa Brannon, Elizabeth M. Huettel, Scott A. |
author_facet | Li, Rosa Brannon, Elizabeth M. Huettel, Scott A. |
author_sort | Li, Rosa |
collection | PubMed |
description | The phenomenon of ambiguity aversion, in which risky gambles with known probabilities are preferred over ambiguous gambles with unknown probabilities, has been thoroughly documented in adults but never measured in children. Here, we use two distinct tasks to investigate ambiguity preferences of children (8- to 9-year-olds) and a comparison group of adults (19- to 27-year-olds). Across three separate measures, we found evidence for significant ambiguity aversion in adults but not in children and for greater ambiguity aversion in adults compared to children. As ambiguity aversion in adults has been theorized to result from a preference to bet on the known and avoid the unfamiliar, we separately measured familiarity bias and found that children, like adults, are biased towards the familiar. Our findings indicate that ambiguity aversion emerges across the course of development between childhood and adolescence, while a familiarity bias is already present in childhood. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4283450 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42834502015-01-19 Children do not exhibit ambiguity aversion despite intact familiarity bias Li, Rosa Brannon, Elizabeth M. Huettel, Scott A. Front Psychol Psychology The phenomenon of ambiguity aversion, in which risky gambles with known probabilities are preferred over ambiguous gambles with unknown probabilities, has been thoroughly documented in adults but never measured in children. Here, we use two distinct tasks to investigate ambiguity preferences of children (8- to 9-year-olds) and a comparison group of adults (19- to 27-year-olds). Across three separate measures, we found evidence for significant ambiguity aversion in adults but not in children and for greater ambiguity aversion in adults compared to children. As ambiguity aversion in adults has been theorized to result from a preference to bet on the known and avoid the unfamiliar, we separately measured familiarity bias and found that children, like adults, are biased towards the familiar. Our findings indicate that ambiguity aversion emerges across the course of development between childhood and adolescence, while a familiarity bias is already present in childhood. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-01-05 /pmc/articles/PMC4283450/ /pubmed/25601848 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01519 Text en Copyright © 2015 Li, Brannon and Huettel. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Li, Rosa Brannon, Elizabeth M. Huettel, Scott A. Children do not exhibit ambiguity aversion despite intact familiarity bias |
title | Children do not exhibit ambiguity aversion despite intact familiarity bias |
title_full | Children do not exhibit ambiguity aversion despite intact familiarity bias |
title_fullStr | Children do not exhibit ambiguity aversion despite intact familiarity bias |
title_full_unstemmed | Children do not exhibit ambiguity aversion despite intact familiarity bias |
title_short | Children do not exhibit ambiguity aversion despite intact familiarity bias |
title_sort | children do not exhibit ambiguity aversion despite intact familiarity bias |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4283450/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25601848 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01519 |
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