Capturing and modelling children and adults' active experimentation in physical micro-environments Global Research Centre for Diverse Intelligences - Discussion Hour

Speaker: Dr Neil Bramley (University of Edinburgh)

Many aspects of our physical world are hidden. For example, it is hard to estimate how heavy an object is from visual observation alone. This project uses physics simulated environments to examine how children and adults actively “experiment” within the physical world to discover latent properties. To do this, I develop a novel modelling framework for quantitative analysis of the information produced by continuous physical interactions. I will describe three experiments that present participants with moving objects in “microworlds” that operate according to continuous spatiotemporal dynamics mimicking everyday physics (i.e., forces of gravity, friction, etc.). Participants are asked to interact with objects in the microworlds, using a mouse or touch screen to identify their masses, or the forces of attraction/ repulsion that governed their movement. Using my modelling framework, I show that learners who freely interacted with the physical environment were able to produce evidence that selectively revealed the physical property consistent with their inquiry goal. As a result, their inferences are more accurate than for passive observers and yoked participants who watch video replays of an active learner's interactions. I demonstrate that 4-10 year-olds are as goal-sensitive and information-efficient as adults when they interact with these environments (in contrast with their poor performance in more formal information search tasks). Finally, I characterize participants' actions into a range of micro-experiment strategies and speculate about how these might be learned or generalized from past experience. Try a demo: https://eco.ppls.ed.ac.uk/~nbramley/physics-world/task.html

Relevant papers:
— Bramley, N. R., Gerstenberg, T., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Gureckis, T. M. (2018). Intuitive experimentation in the physical world. Cognitive psychology, 105, 9-38. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001002851730347X
— Bramley, N. R., & Ruggeri, A. (2022). Children's active physical learning is as effective and goal-targeted as adults'. Developmental Psychology, 58(12), 2310. https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2023-00704-001.pdf

Bio:
Neil Bramley is a Reader in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. His lab studies how people represent the actual world and think about its alternatives, plus how they use these abilities to plan, imagine, explain, blame and solve problems. He generally uses interactive experiments and games combined with computational modelling to investigate these i