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ABSTRACT Numerical estimation is one of the key early math skills and predicts children's long‐term math achievement. While children are born with an intuitive “number sense,” they do not form a mapping between nonverbal numerical representations and symbolic numbers until about 5 years of age. This protracted learning process is embedded in children's interactions with other people, although little is known about how children's existing social beliefs may influence how they receive numerical information from other people. Meanwhile, children in the United States develop a stereotype to associate men with being better at math at around 6 years of age. Does this gender stereotype influence how children receive numerical information from other people? Using a numerical estimation task, we showed 5‐ to 7‐year‐old children (N= 198; 93 girls; United States) competing answers from a male and a female informant before asking children to provide their own answer. We found that children's answers were biased by the male informant more than the female, even when the female was accurate. This bias was domain‐specific, as there was no difference in children's performance on a memory control task. Furthermore, repeated exposure to inaccurate answers from a male informant (in contrast to accurate answers from a female informant) induced changes in children's estimation even when the informants were no longer present. Therefore, gender stereotypes may have profound impacts on how children acquire and process numerical information. SummaryChildren form structural mappings between numerical quantities and their mental number line, which can be calibrated by numerical information from other people.Here, in two studies, we tested how informant gender influences children's estimation performance.Numerical information received from men has stronger calibration effects on children's estimation performance compared to information from women.Repeated exposure to overestimation from men has lasting impacts on children's subsequent estimation performance
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This content will become publicly available on November 1, 2026
Computational Approaches Reveal Developmental Shifts in Exploratory Play
ABSTRACT Although exploratory play is considered a hallmark of cognitive development and learning, relatively few studies have been able to quantitatively characterize the shifts that may occur in children's approach to exploration. One reason for this gap is due to challenges coding and analyzing children's exploratory play behavior. In our paper, we employ a novel computational modeling approach to understand whether and how children's exploratory play patterns shift in early childhood (3‐ to 11‐years‐old). We analyze data from children (N = 432) across five different experiments that varied in the type of exploration task (including novel toys, novel topics, and novel envelopes). Children's behaviors were coded action‐by‐action according to whether children repeated an action on the same type of target, switched to a novel target, or terminated play. Our computational Markov model searches over the space of possible “stay,” “switch,” and “end” parameters to quantify child‐specific transition probabilities. We find that overall, older children are less likely to perseverate, more likely to switch, and more likely to end the task earlier. Our approach provides a demonstration of how Markov models can be used to map the process of play, providing insight into theories of developmental changes in exploration. SummaryWe use Markov models to quantify developmental shifts in children's exploratory play across five naturalistic tasks.Older children showed increased exploratory variability and decreased perseveration during play.Developmental effects were most consistent in novel toy tasks, but varied across contexts.Our findings help reconcile conflicting prior research by highlighting the role of task structure and developmental changes in exploratory strategy.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2042489
- PAR ID:
- 10654763
- Publisher / Repository:
- Developmental Science
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Developmental Science
- Volume:
- 28
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 1363-755X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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