Anna Thoma
annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma
@annaithoma.bsky.social
Postdoc @ Center for Adaptive Rationality | Max Planck Institute for Human Development | learning, decision making, development
You can explore the map online here, check it out: mpib.berlin/vFVqU
Reinforcement Map
mpib.berlin
October 17, 2025 at 7:42 AM
October 17, 2025 at 7:27 AM
8/n Freely accessible, pre-formatted version of the manuscript: mpib.berlin/zWaGS
Thank you to my PhD advisor Christin Schulze & co-author Ben Newell for their support in this project. Happy to see it out now 💐!
mpib.berlin
April 10, 2025 at 2:19 PM
7/n We argue to more strongly consider the structure of real-world learning environments (where rewards may not be random but rather clumped or autocorrelated) when examining the development of learning and decision-making strategies.
April 10, 2025 at 2:17 PM
6/n Our work connects to research on the benefits of cognitive immaturity: For instance, perseveration tendencies in early childhood may hold advantages when repetition fosters learning. Similarly, exploring a lot (maybe too much) helps older kids to adapt to changing environments.
April 10, 2025 at 2:16 PM
5/n Computational modeling results reinforce behavioral analyses: Children's exploratory behavior and adaptivity increase with age, but adults seem better able to balance exploration and exploitation.
April 10, 2025 at 2:16 PM
4/n By age 6, children increasingly diversify choices, for instance, through probability matching. They explore widely (sometimes more than adults) and are quickly able to adapt to an ecologically plausible statistical task structure.
April 10, 2025 at 2:15 PM
3/n 3–4-year-olds showed strong perseveration tendencies: They often stick with one option, even if switching would be beneficial. Our findings integrate into previous research showing increased maximization in young kids; however, we suggest that low implementation effort is key.
April 10, 2025 at 2:15 PM
2/n Children (3–11 years, N = 362) & adults (N = 121) repeatedly chose between two options with different reward probabilities. We tested three between-subjects conditions: two static (50% vs. 50% and 70 vs. 30%) and one ecologically plausible environment (initially 70% vs. 30%).
April 10, 2025 at 2:14 PM
In sum, our findings integrate into literature showing that probabilistic inferences in childhood may be highly context-dependent, that previous findings may not easily generalize to a new task, and that the learning format is an important aspect to consider in future work.11/n
December 9, 2024 at 2:23 PM