Changes in cognitive flexibility and hypothesis search across human life history from childhood to adolescence to adulthood
- Submitting institution
-
University of Edinburgh
- Unit of assessment
- 11 - Computer Science and Informatics
- Output identifier
- 58897098
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
-
10.1073/pnas.1700811114
- Title of journal
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 7892
- Volume
- 114
- Issue
- 30
- ISSN
- 0027-8424
- Open access status
- Compliant
- Month of publication
- July
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
8
- Research group(s)
-
D - Language, Interaction and Robotics
- Citation count
- 64
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This work uses ideas from machine learning to develop a novel theory of cognitive development, explaining long-term patterns in reasoning from early childhood to adulthood. It tests a radical hypothesis about why humans have a longer adolescence than non-human animals, using extensive and diverse data sets, including large-scale new developmental studies (with 286 new participants) and data from past experiments, including several age groups, multiple domains of higher-level cognition, and cross-cultural replications. The results explain cognitive differences across development, and have implications for why early-childhood educational interventions are more or less effective. Published in PNAS; acceptance rate of 16-19%.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -