I enjoyed reading about the ecological active learning framework. I find the prediction that children might explore in a strategic way (i.e. to rule out or test certain hypotheses) even from a younger age than it is currently thought both interesting and compelling.
- I wonder If you have considered testing this hypothesis in even younger children through the use of methods that are not restricted to question-asking?
- I wonder how this framework can be used to describe or explain some existing finding in the literature regarding the fact that young learners might find it more rewarding to explore than to obtain a tangible reward. To put this in ecological active learning framework terminology, might there be circumstances where the prior intuition is so strong that learners might be motivated to skip the ‘hypothesis scanning’ step and directly proceed to learn something potentially interesting about them? This scenario might not apply well to the Toma story of course, because if I am sure that I already found the reason for his lateness, there is no point exploring the other reasons, since they are automatically ruled out. However, do you think that this framework could capture instances in which, say, a child knows that a reward has been hidden in one box, and a second reward is hidden in one of multiple boxes. Would this framework predict or accept the prediction that in such a scenario, a young learner might be so driven to ‘actively learn’ that they would prefer to explore the uncertain outcomes, even at the risk of not finding or winning the tangible reward?