How minds differ
Exploring or sticking with the known
In shortEvery choice balances the known and the new; when the world feels unpredictable, people stick with what they know.
The idea
Every choice balances two goals: getting what we already know is good, and finding out something new. Children are built to explore more than adults, which is why play and curiosity count for so much. When the world feels unpredictable, the balance tips towards the known: the same food, the same game, the same video. When it feels predictable, exploring becomes possible again.
What to try
- Make the unknown smaller before asking for it: show photos, visit first, go with someone familiar.
- Put the new next to the known: a new food on the plate with a favourite.
- Notice exploring when it happens, however small, and say so.
The common mistake
Forcing novelty to break a pattern, which usually makes the known even more attractive.
Want to know more?
Start here
Short, plain pieces by the researchers and good writers.
Books
How the predictive brain shapes what we see, feel and do, with many everyday examples.
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The science behind itHow strong the evidence is, the model, videos and references.
How strong the evidence is
Promising Good studies, but little tested with children at home or school, or the step to daily life is our interpretation.
Expected free energy combines epistemic value (information gain) and pragmatic value (expected satisfaction of preferences); exploration appears when uncertainty can be resolved (Schwartenbeck et al., 2019). Gopnik (2020) argues that childhood is a long period of ‘high-temperature’ exploration, protected by caregivers. When the expected precision of outcomes is low and the cost of error is high, pragmatic value dominates and behaviour stays with known policies. In assessment: map exploration across contexts (with and without a trusted adult, familiar and new places) and test whether prior exposure increases it.
More technical books
The technical textbook on active inference, for those who want the formal model.
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References
- Schwartenbeck, P., Passecker, J., Hauser, T. U., FitzGerald, T. H. B., Kronbichler, M., & Friston, K. J. (2019). Computational mechanisms of curiosity and goal-directed exploration. eLife, 8, e41703.
- Gopnik, A. (2020). Childhood as a solution to explore–exploit tensions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375(1803), 20190502.
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