Learning behavioural responses and adapting them based on feedback is crucial from a young age, continuing to develop into young adulthood. This study examines the development trajectory and contributing factors from childhood to adulthood using a reversal learning paradigm. We tested 202 participants aged 10 to 22 in an online study, where they…

Both humans and non-human animals exhibit sensitivity to the approximate number of items in a visual array, as indexed by their performance in numerosity discrimination tasks, and even neonates can detect changes in numerosity. These findings are often interpreted as evidence for an innate 'number sense'. However, recent simulation work has…

The human brain is plastic -- which means the brain changes its connectivity and even its structure in response to learning. This brief report highlights the following points: (1) A human's first learning experiences are foundational for later education, and experiences in the early years of life can greatly impact on later achievement; (2) Waves…

Three experiments with preschool- and young school-aged children (N = 75 and 53) explored the kinds of relations children detect in samples of instances (descriptive problem) and how they generalize those relations to new instances (inferential problem). Each experiment initially presented a perfect biconditional relation between two features…

Spatial thinking is a cognitive skill that can be used in everyday life, the workplace, and science to structure problems, find answers, and express solutions using the properties of space. It can be learned and taught formally to students using appropriately designed tools, technologies, and curricula. This report explains the nature and…