About this session

Friday, 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM

Unravelling Early Childhood Decision-Making: From Individual Characteristics to Social Influences

Decision-making skills in childhood have intrigued psychologists for decades. The topic includes individuals' strategies during goal pursuit, balancing "exploration" of new possibilities with "exploitation" of familiar choices, and how children navigate their decisions in the presence of others. As naïve learners, young children must explore to learn about the world and exploit their learned knowledge when necessary. Yet, the role of individual characteristics and social influences in shaping children’s decision-making remains understudied.

Our symposium presents four studies that delve into these complexities. The first study identified three distinct explore-exploit decision-making profiles and their unique relations with specific aspects of executive function (EF) in preschoolers. The second study demonstrated how higher EF and metacognition modulate preschoolers’ temperamental impulses, contributing to more strategic explore-exploit decision-making.

Extending the explore-exploit concepts, the third study found children's goal commitment similar to that of adults from age 6, correlating with attention skills. Nonetheless, preliminary results suggested children switch goals in the presence of others, indicating a social influence on decision-making. The fourth study successfully increased 7-year-old children’s state-level social curiosity experimentally, leading to greater exploration interest in an imaginary human over an object. This intervention even demonstrated a far-transfer effect, increasing prosocial decisions for children with low trait-level social curiosity.

Our symposium provides a comprehensive look at how children's decisions relate to individual differences in EF, metacognition, and temperament and how they are shaped by social factors, thus opening up the discussion on ways to support more effective decision-making with benefits for the self and others.

Paper #1
Title	Individual Differences in Preschoolers’ Decision Making and Cool Executive Functions
Presenting author	Nancy Garon, Mount Allison University, Canada

Paper #2
Title	Executive Function and Metacognition Moderate Relations Between Temperament and Explore-Exploit Decision-Making in Preschoolers
Presenting author	Seokyung Kim, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, United States

Paper #3
Title	Children's Spontaneous Commitment and Intention Coordination in Individual and Social Decision-Making Contexts
Presenting author	Shaozhe Cheng, Duke University, United States

Paper #4
Title	The Interplay of Trait and State Social Curiosity in Children’s Prosocial Decision-Making
Presenting author	Nayen Lee, Arizona State University, United States

View all paper details

Session chair
Seokyung Kim, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, United States

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