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The elaboration of exploratory play

We apply a new quantitative method for investigating how children's exploration changes across age in order to gain insight into how exploration unfolds over the course of a human life from a life-history perspective. In this study, different facets of exploratory play were quantified using a n...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Pelz, Maddie, Kidd, Celeste
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7293158/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32475326
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0503
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author Pelz, Maddie
Kidd, Celeste
author_facet Pelz, Maddie
Kidd, Celeste
author_sort Pelz, Maddie
collection PubMed
description We apply a new quantitative method for investigating how children's exploration changes across age in order to gain insight into how exploration unfolds over the course of a human life from a life-history perspective. In this study, different facets of exploratory play were quantified using a novel touchscreen environment across a large sample and wide age range of children in the USA (n = 105, ages = 1 year and 10 months to 12 years and 2 months). In contrast with previous theories that have suggested humans transition from more exploratory to less throughout maturation, we see children transition from less broadly exploratory as toddlers to more efficient and broad as adolescents. Our data cast doubt on the picture of human life history as involving a linear transition from more curious in early childhood to less curious with age. Instead, exploration appears to become more elaborate throughout human childhood. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals’.
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spelling pubmed-72931582020-06-15 The elaboration of exploratory play Pelz, Maddie Kidd, Celeste Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci Articles We apply a new quantitative method for investigating how children's exploration changes across age in order to gain insight into how exploration unfolds over the course of a human life from a life-history perspective. In this study, different facets of exploratory play were quantified using a novel touchscreen environment across a large sample and wide age range of children in the USA (n = 105, ages = 1 year and 10 months to 12 years and 2 months). In contrast with previous theories that have suggested humans transition from more exploratory to less throughout maturation, we see children transition from less broadly exploratory as toddlers to more efficient and broad as adolescents. Our data cast doubt on the picture of human life history as involving a linear transition from more curious in early childhood to less curious with age. Instead, exploration appears to become more elaborate throughout human childhood. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals’. The Royal Society 2020-07-20 2020-06-01 /pmc/articles/PMC7293158/ /pubmed/32475326 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0503 Text en © 2020 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Articles
Pelz, Maddie
Kidd, Celeste
The elaboration of exploratory play
title The elaboration of exploratory play
title_full The elaboration of exploratory play
title_fullStr The elaboration of exploratory play
title_full_unstemmed The elaboration of exploratory play
title_short The elaboration of exploratory play
title_sort elaboration of exploratory play
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7293158/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32475326
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0503
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