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Cyan comments on [Link] Are Children Natural Bayesians? - Less Wrong Discussion

-4 Post author: JQuinton 11 October 2012 05:05PM

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Comment author: Cyan 12 October 2012 02:03:11PM *  4 points [-]

Did they run the same experiment with the adult subjects?

Yes, they did. Gopnik writes:

As we get older our “priors,” rationally enough, get stronger and stronger. We rely more on what we already know, or think we know, and less on new data. In some studies we’re doing in my lab now, my colleagues and I found that the very fact that children know less makes them able to learn more. We gave 4-year-olds and adults evidence about a toy that worked in an unusual way. The correct hypothesis about the toy had a low “prior” but was strongly supported by the data. The 4-year-olds were actually more likely to figure out the toy than the adults were.

Comment author: shminux 12 October 2012 04:05:27PM 7 points [-]

Interesting, and still perfectly Bayesian. Adults have stronger priors, so their updates are not as large.

Comment author: Cyan 12 October 2012 04:52:39PM *  1 point [-]

Yup. The nature of the change in JQuinton's question was a change in the available evidence. (A quibble: this is not perfectly Bayesian, since adults ought not to treat toys in psychology experiments as exchangeable with toys encountered in the wild. I'd posit that Thinking, Fast and Slow is relevant here.)

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