
Young children would rather explore than get rewards - kyle_morris_
https://news.osu.edu/young-children-would-rather-explore-than-get-rewards/
======
irjustin
Overall, this style is what Montessori-schools of teaching believe and how
they operate. Essentially a self-exploratory based learning style.

There's lots of benefit in letting kids simply explore. As a parent, I find I
have to stop myself from pushing my child to the 'best' result and let them
be. That it's okay to pick a less optimal solution.

Where I find this alarmingly true is when outcome/results are negative
(usually ending in pain). "Don't stand like that on the chair." "Climb in this
way" "Don't eat that dirt, soap, car, whatever!!"

I know my job as a parent is to guide while keeping them safe at the same time
letting exploration happen, but man sometimes it's just so hard. For example,
letting my child explore while walking home can make a 5 minute walk take 10,
15 minutes longer.

Such things tend to be at odds with what I want but it is more important than
myself.

~~~
macspoofing
>Where I find this alarmingly true is when outcome/results are negative
(usually ending in pain)

Pain is a very good teacher. Letting children hurt themselves and learn from
that (within reason, obviously) is not a bad thing.

~~~
munificent
I was hanging out with a friend who is also parent. As happens pretty often,
the kids are all off somewhere else getting into trouble. Eventually, one
starts wailing. My friend looks at me and says, "Ah, the sound of learning."

I always tell my wife is that my goal is not to keep the kids from getting
hurt, just to keep them from getting maimed.

It's not just that pain is a good teacher, though it is. There is an even more
vital lesson that the kids need to learn. "I can handle pain." They need to
see themselves survive and push through difficulty because I believe
witnessing their own resilience is the foundation of not just good self-
esteem, but _strong_ self-esteem.

In the US today, we're expected to raise our children like hothouse flowers.
We get them to blossom by creating a maximally nurturing environmennt and
shielding them from all possible adversity. That's maybe a good strategy if
they can be shielded for the rest of their lives, but unlike orchids,
eventually our kids will have to leave the greenhouse. They need to be able to
handle what's out there and not wilt.

~~~
SamPatt
Parenting is about using our experience to avoid catastrophic outcomes for our
children until they've developed enough experience to avoid those outcomes
themselves.

It's more than that, but that's at the core. Love them, model good behaviors,
and don't let them do irreparable harm to themselves or others.

------
blobbers
Isn't this the children solving the multi armed bandit problem?

In a child's mind, they haven't yet fully decided how things behave and react,
so they are willing to try things to see if they've changed (because in fact
often they do in their own mental models, as well as the resolution of those
models.

If you think of it as a regression tree, their models start out fairly shallow
and then slowly get deeper as they age. That's a square thing. That's a book.
That's a book about animals. That's a book about marine animals. That's a book
about marine animals that I like. That's a book about whales.

In trying to solve the multi armed bandit, they're willing to explore to try
to find better rewards because in their own world there are often better
rewards.

If the game shifted to having a different alien be the best one half way
through the game, I'd be curious how quickly the more maturely cognitive kids
did. It's possible that becoming fixated on something (the way adults are) can
ultimately limit your abilities in a game. In adulthood, "creative" solutions
can sometimes be better than more "standard" solutions, but incur more risk.

~~~
mam2
Yes its called "simulated annealing for your own life".

In 3 days hacker news will discover GANs and make a shocking headline like
"challenges and adversity makes you better / stronger".

#mindblown

~~~
weatherman2
I'm going to read my children a picture book titled "Scraggles the Puppy
Explores the Forest of Simulated Annealing."

------
fxtentacle
While the study classifies it as exploration and claims an intrinsic reward
that will die out later in life, I would describe the behavior as novelty-
seeking.

I'd wager that for adults, a game on a screen is just not new enough. But if
you'd give adult males a choice of which female to undress, I'm pretty sure
they would value "exploration" very highly again.

In a similar vain, when smartphones were new, the adult population was very
active at buying new ones, comparing, and exploring the market. Now that we've
had them for some years, phone upgrades have become a necessity and a lot less
exciting.

So my theory would be that there is no loss in the intrinsic motivation, there
is a loss in the amount of novelty.

If that is correct, then our school system is actually very appropriate even
for highly intrinsically motivated kids, because they are introduced to new
topics and areas of knowledge that are (hopefully) new to them.

That also aligns with my personal experience. While I hated getting up early
and the concept of sitting in a chair just listening, I was excited about all
the different things they showed me. And I liked best the teachers that would
mention slightly irrelevant side details just for the fun of it.

~~~
cyberlurker
Let me just be the one to say your choice of topic for exploration is
incredibly cringeworthy in 2020. Also inaccurate for some parts of the adult
male population. Use a better example next time.

~~~
kcolford
Maybe you find it cringeworthy, but I find it on topic and very relatable. The
role of a speaker is to make their material easy to digest for their audience.
For this audience in particular, I would argue that this example is
statistically likely to resonate with most of them. So your parent commenter
is strongly incentivized to use this example and conduct themselves this way,
so of course they did so.

I don't think your comment contributes much to the conversation. If anything I
feel it stifles the conversation. If you had shared that the parent's comment
made you uncomfortable then that is a contribution that we could explore.
Instead you decide to decree from the top of your high horse that his speech
wasn't acceptable. I don't like what you did one bit, and I think you did it
just to make other people uncomfortable and put yourself in a position of
power over them.

~~~
watwut
I think that point was that relevant portion of adult male population spends a
lot of time play games on screen, not finding it boring at all. They do find
it more then they do porn. In 2020, claiming that "a game on a screen is just
not new enough" for adults is highly inaccurate.

~~~
fxtentacle
While I fully agree with you that there are fantastic games on screens (I'm
playing HL Alyx at the moment), I was trying to present an alternative
explanation for the study. So we are taking about a game that is easy enough
for kids to understand and play reliably. That might make the game used in the
study too boring for adults, because they have played similar games in the
past, while it is a new experience for the kids.

------
zackmorris
Well ya. I've found at middle age that I'm most interested in connection and
transcendence, finding meaning and such. When one realizes that material
things truly are valueless compared to things like consciousness, friendship,
love, dignity, etc etc etc, then everything else falls away. I often find
myself realizing that I am looking at the world with the same childlike wonder
I had when I was 5. To me, this search for meaning was what the 1960s was all
about, as well as every other cultural renaissance and era of spiritual
awakening.

Which makes the conceptual basis of things like economics suspect. The idea
that humans are motivated by monetary rewards and material things turned out
to be false. So did concepts like scarcity, reciprocity, commoditization, and
so on. Those things worked at one time, up until the middle of the last
century and dawn of the information age (where technology surpassed what was
required to meet humanity's basic needs), but now actively inhibit human
evolution IMHO.

So how to fix the mess we're in? I think it starts with questioning basic
assumptions. Sadly, American culture seems to be racing away from that as fast
as it can in these times. Dunno about the rest of the world.

~~~
thefucnjosh
It's been known for years that oftentimes paying people more for
intellectually demanding tasks, leads to decreases in productivity Capitalism
and the ideologies surrounding it, fall apart when you start looking at real
assets and how the exchanges value of those assets takes a hit during economic
down turns. The idea that "humans [were] motivated by monetary rewards and
material things" didn't turn out to be false, it's just always been the case
that it wasn't true.

~~~
pg_1234
There's converse to this however, when you charge a company more they're less
inclined to waste your time.

------
kqr
For anyone interested in this type of stuff, I can recommend reading _Drive_.

Briefly, human behaviour can be motivated for extrinsic and intrinsic reasons.
The rewards in this article are extrinsic motivators. Exploring is rewarding
in an intrinsic way; it is a strive towards autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

In adults (and in older children) applying extrinsic motivators kills
intrinsic motivation. Once the extrinsic motivators stop coming in, there is
no desire left to do the task. Intrinsic motivation is practically infinite,
as long as the environment is set up right to enable it.

Extrinsic motivation also tends to produce behaviour that does the bare
minimum to get the reward (or avoid the negative consequences) whereas
intrinsic motivation is what makes us want to excel.

Of course, I've skipped many important points and not countered any
counterargument here, but I recommend reading Drive first if you think you
disagree.

But the worst part of it all?

The schooling system, with its grades, signed slips, and whatnot, is set up
through extrinsic motivation to teach obedience, conformity, and smothering
the intrinsic drive so necessary for the creative work we will expect from the
children later in life.

~~~
adrianN
I often see criticism of the school system like yours. I think it comes from a
perspective of a fairly intelligent, self-motivated individual, probably from
a family that valued education. However many children lack one or more of
those factors. For them the intrinsic motivation is to play video games all
day, or talk to their friends, or smoke weed. There is no intrinsic motivation
for most children to learn _all_ the subjects taught in school. I think the
school system is fairly good at forcing all children to learn at least a
little about all subjects. This comes at the price of not optimally supporting
students who would do much better in a different kind of system.

~~~
yellowapple
> I often see criticism of the school system like yours. I think it comes from
> a perspective of a fairly intelligent, self-motivated individual, probably
> from a family that valued education.

I ain't vain enough to consider myself even "fairly intelligent", but I can
say that I ain't very self-motivated, nor have I been since elementary school,
and in hindsight my education system's insistence on strangling such intrinsic
motivation in favor of extrinsic motivation is exactly what killed said self-
motivation. "Grades are all that matter, and mine ain't anywhere near good
enough to go to a good college, so why bother trying?"

It's something I'm actively working on trying to fix to this day, but old
habits die hard.

~~~
jariel
Decent high school grades are not that hard to get. It's not 'strangulation'
to have to take 'English, Geography, History and Math'. I wish I had paid more
attention in English class, I did not respect how important it was going to be
until later in life, for example.

The course load in Eng. or in Grad School - now that can be overwhelming to
the point of exhaustion.

~~~
ajmadesc
Decent Eng Grad School grades are not that hard to get. It's not 'exhausting'
to have to take 'Electrodynamics, Orbital Mechanics, or Geophysics' I wish I
would have paid more attention in Project Management class, I did not respect
how important it was going to be until later in life, for example.

See how stupid that sounds

~~~
watwut
Your version sounds stupid, because Electrodynamics and Orbital Mechanics are
notoriously difficult classes where even those who passed them use expressions
like "working hard" and "difficult". And many students actually fail them.

High schoool English, Geography, History and Math is referenced as easy by
many students. Typical student does not have a problem to pass that class.

------
brnt
I guess I must have bever lost the child in me. I've been a fan of open world
games, just so I can roam the world. I sometimes dont even play the storyline
at all. I still don't like that Steam added 'achievements' that I can't turn
off, I'll be in charge of what constitutes a goal thank you very much :)

Another poster had an interesting observation about academia vs corporate
work. I'm 33 and still in academia, and I now realize a large part of that is
the freedom it provides. I've see salary as a score on someone else's
scoreboard, and very uninteresting for that reason. OK, I'm old enough to have
experienced a person needs income for practical reasons, but I'm not going to
work for it ;)

I'm allergic to competition, scores, rewards, prestige, I guess that makes me
child-like?

~~~
mamurphy
>I'm 33 and still in academia, I'm allergic to competition, scores, rewards,
prestige

I had been under the impression that academia was mostly very competitive to
be able to get career (tenure track) positions. Are you not aiming for that,
is it less competitive in your field, or am I missing something else?

~~~
dguest
I've described academia (to my friends who work in software) as a company
where the most coveted promotion will land you a job in marketing.

It does indeed come with a lot of freedom, but the relatively flat structure
means that there's usually no one above the group's PI to promote their
research. As a result PIs spend a lot of time writing grant proposals.

------
wcoenen
I'm reminded of a paper about an AI system with curiosity. Basically, the AI
would learn to predict the effect of its actions, and would prefer to take
actions where its prediction error was large. That way it would gather more
data about stuff it didn't know yet.

This works well to learn to play video games without defining an extrinsic
reward. However, there is a problem when the system encounters the equivalent
of TV. It then gets stuck watching the unpredictable stream of events.

paper and code: [https://pathak22.github.io/large-scale-
curiosity/](https://pathak22.github.io/large-scale-curiosity/)

Coverage by "2 minute papers" youtube channel:
[https://youtu.be/fzuYEStsQxc](https://youtu.be/fzuYEStsQxc)

------
bergstromm466
Has anyone heard of Sudbury Valley schools?

Peter Hartkamp started one in the Netherlands, and wrote a book about it.

 _“Our current education systems do not trust children to learn what they need
to know. Governments believe that children must be coerced into learning what
they prescribe as necessary for future life even though they do not and cannot
know what that future will be like. Yet we do know that coercion produces
anxiety and fear of failure and that this in turn inhibits learning and
destroys confidence. We also know that creativity, innovation and empathy are
not encouraged in such a climate even though above all else these are the
survival qualities for coping with an uncertain future.

In this short book Peter Hartkamp develops his arguments against coercive
‘education’ with a needle-sharp engineer’s logic. He invites us to imagine
what schools would be like if they took the articles of the UN Convention on
the Rights of the Child seriously, a not unreasonable position as all states
are signatories.

I wholeheartedly and without reservation recommend this book to the many
parents, students, teachers, employers and policy makers who know in their
hearts that something is very wrong with the examination and testing factories
that we are allowing our schools to become. It represents a beacon of hope
that another way is possible.”_ [1]

[1]
[http://hetgedwongenonderwijsvoorbij.nl/en/](http://hetgedwongenonderwijsvoorbij.nl/en/)

~~~
jkhdigital
Yes, and I’ve been fantasizing about sending my child to one since before he
was born. Unfortunately I don’t live near any :-(

------
ta1234567890
This video shows a slime mold doing exploration/discovery and then
exploitation:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GwKuFREOgmo](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GwKuFREOgmo)

Relating it to the article, it seems we function in a similar way to the mold,
but our balance between exploration and exploitation changes as we grow up.

Also reading other comments, it seems like different people have different
balances or proportions between the exploration/exploitation modes. I
personally am very imbalanced towards exploration; exploitation makes me
demotivate and stop doing very quickly.

------
distant_hat
This is completely expected. If you look at multiarmed bandits, getting
rewards would be exploiting and the other option is exploring. If you have a
longer time horizon as children will, it is better to explore and find a
better return than exploit something already known which is likely to be
suboptimal.

------
flooo
There is an interesting relation to this with regard to reinforcement learning
(RL) where the trade-off between exploration and exploitation is one of the
fundamental issues. Systematic or structured exploration has shown some
success here as well.

What 'structured' means here deeply depends on the representation the agent
has of the world, i.e. which states and actions are similar to each other.
Current RL setups typically learn such representations on the go. Abstractions
can be very powerful here.

Arguably, people also perform structured exploration on learned
representations. It may be the case that the adults have learned a
representation of the 'game' and their lies little exploratory value in
suboptimal actions.

------
gomes33
For those interested in this topic i recommend reading about the Montessori
method.

The basic idea of the Montessori philosophy of education is that every child
carries within him/her the man/woman he/she will become. In order to develop
the physical, intellectual, and spiritual powers required for this task to the
fullest, there must be freedom—freedom to interact with a prepared
environment.

~~~
andrekandre
along those lines, seymour papert talked about imersion being necessary for
students to learn in thier own way, and for teachers to be not just
instructors but guides who also share and learn with the students

i guess said more simply, its learning by doing (go to france if you wanna
learn french, or at least make a mini-france in your classroom)

------
op03
Academia and Corporations.

Academics are dealt with as we do kids i.e. they are protected and allowed to
explore. Corporations exploit what has already been explored for reward -
without the reward there is nothing protecting them.

~~~
adamnemecek
Academia really doesn't let you explore.

~~~
asdff
Depends on your advisor.

~~~
bart_spoon
Academia isn't being a grad student with an advisor. Academia is being the
advisor to a grad student (along with research, publishing, probably teaching,
etc).

------
dzink
Exploration as the primary algorithm continues as long as we continue to get
increasing variable rewards from it. When the rewards tapper off or we are
pressured for money, we choose the maximum we've found so far. This instinct
to collect options has probably served us well in foraging for food, picking a
mate, and any other exploration endeavor that involves finding the best of a
range of newly available options.

However it may also be the root of gambling addiction and any other variable
rewards game systems. Gambling, lotteries can also become more attractive the
more you are pressured for money - one could argue as a means of concentrating
on your most approachable local maximum.

------
eloff
We use a variation of this "four squares" game at Sparkademy. The four squares
of randomized point values (there's a pattern to it, but I don't want to give
it away here.) The goal is to maximize your score which involves switching
between exploring for a better payoff and exploiting what you think is the
highest paying square over a large number of trials. We use it to as part of a
criteria to identify if a person might be well suited for our innovation
online course, and later be able to apply that knowledge in their company.

------
Razengan
Still holds true as an adult for me at least.

It’s just that “survival” takes away too much time and energy from
exploration.

------
rv-de
> But while adults then used that knowledge to maximize their prizes, children
> continued exploring the other options, just to see if their value may have
> changed.

I think it is not just "semantics" to consider that for children the reward is
simply the rush of playing instead of what the researchers design as the
intended award. And frankly speaking this is not at all a surprising result.
Children learn through playing and they very much enjoy that process.

------
drewcoo
The "exploring" is because they're told to make a choice. Is there something
similar to developing object permanence but with abstract concepts or
probabilities that happens after that age?

And the abstract is here:
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/desc.13026](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/desc.13026)

------
danschumann
Read: exploration is rewarding.

~~~
amatic
That's what I get, too. A "reward" is a subjective experience. If someone
doesn't care about grades, then good grades will not be rewarding, and bad
grades will not be punishment.

------
082349872349872
Anyone have access to the paper? As far as I can tell, the young children were
perfect convex utilitarians, in deciding that more than "enough" stickers were
not worth the more fun of clicking around.

How were the adults rewarded? Did they also get something intrinsically
valuable at the end of the experiment, or did they just collect virtual points
because they were told they were supposed to?

Working dogs have been specialised by breeding for overexpression of the
various initial phases of the wildtype hunting sequence: herding, retrieval,
etc. Does "sex sells" indicate we may have been bred to overexpress the
"identify attractive potential partner" and "do things they (appear to) like
doing" phases of the wildtype reproductive sequence?

------
anigbrowl
This is by no means limited to young people; I much prefer video games where I
can keep discovering things to the tedious business of performing tasks or
winning beating bosses.

~~~
PikachuEXE
Yes I prefer games with good stories

I am having fun discovering the plots bit by bit

------
jimkleiber
TIL I mostly think like a 4-year-old.

~~~
david422
Very mature for a 3 year old.

~~~
jimkleiber
What can I say? #blessed

------
jkhdigital
Seems like further evidence that nature has developed an optimal algorithm for
solving the multi-armed bandit problem as it manifests in the typical
environment humans evolved in. Unlike the artificial games used by the
researchers, there is no such thing as a fixed reward in nature—everything is
subject to change unexpectedly. Children are wired with an algorithm that
heavily favors exploration in light of the dynamic environment.

------
Aviatore
If OP's premise is true, I wonder how much that is changing now that parents
are throwing electronics at their children. Many of the things that they get
to interact with on an electronic aims to optimize rewards. Will this shape
generations that are always in search of quick hits and less interested in the
exploratory nature of things? How will something that seems to small as a
parent reshape the children and society?

~~~
GuB-42
I don't think so. I suspect the "exploration" bias observed in that study is
somewhat hardwired into the brain. Kids need to learn, adults need to be
efficient.

The test was clearly designed as a way to optimize reward. And indeed, adults
quickly went to the optimal solution. But kids kept exploring, even if further
tests show that they knew the optimal solution.

------
cycomanic
For people interested in this topic I highly recommend reading about
summerhill school [1] and similar projects. The topic of alternative schooling
systems is quite fascinating.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School)

~~~
messo
For a US-based variation of democratic schooling, check out the Sudbury Valley
School:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School)

------
sporkologist
Exploring is its own reward apparently.

------
toomanybeersies
Reading between the lines, as we grow up, we get conditioned to follow
instructions, rather than act independently.

For the adults, there's no incentive to maximise how many virtual candies they
collect, beyond doing it because they were told it was the aim.

------
ddingus
As a kid, exploring was, and remains a reward.

Someone to help, share in it, make more possible? Golden.

~~~
PikachuEXE
And this makes me think of Minecraft (on multiplayer servers)

------
trombonechamp
Monkeys do the same thing:

 _Many non-human animals show exploratory behaviors. It remains unclear
whether any possess human-like curiosity. We previously proposed three
criteria for applying the term curiosity to animal behavior: (1) the subject
is willing to sacrifice reward to obtain information, (2) the information
provides no immediate instrumental or strategic benefit, and (3) the amount
the subject is willing to pay depends systematically on the amount of
information available. In previous work on information-seeking in animals,
information generally predicts upcoming rewards, and animals’ decisions may
therefore be a byproduct of reinforcement processes. Here we get around this
potential confound by taking advantage of macaques’ ability to reason
counterfactually (that is, about outcomes that could have occurred had the
subject chosen differently). Specifically, macaques sacrificed fluid reward to
obtain information about counterfactual outcomes. Moreover, their willingness
to pay scaled with the information (Shannon entropy) offered by the
counterfactual option. These results demonstrate the existence of human-like
curiosity in non-human primates according to our criteria, which circumvent
several confounds associated with less stringent criteria._

Paper:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00100...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027719300642)

Non-paywalled version:
[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2018/03/29/291...](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2018/03/29/291708.full.pdf)

~~~
officehero
Doesn't this just mean that the "reward" definition is poor in this case i.e.
the agent does not care about maximizing it because there are additional
components left out of it (e.g. survival)?

------
pul
This has surprising similarities with data science theory: multi-armed bandit
with a decreasing-epsilon strategy (children) or an epsilon-first strategy
(adults).

------
kingkawn
That’s why we train them to want rewards first, then use that to get them to
do what we want

------
ZainRiz
I can attest to this.

I tried offering my toddler a thousand dollars. She preferred to blow bubbles.

------
hunterx
Some adults do as well, they are the ones who usually discover be things...

------
twowatches
Science proving things that people already know anyway, as usual.

------
known
Interesting; Wish adults do the same;

------
sjg007
Man I thought this was obvious!

------
sillypuddy
Young people of any age

------
ncr100
What does this say about Capitalism and the accumulation of wealth?

------
OneGuy123
Offtopic but regarding the supression of the child from the parent: few people
realize how severely the large majority of parents damage their children and
supress their innate creativity and drive.

This is also very hard to realize as an adult because it gets unconsiously
supressed.

The following books opened my eyes at the fact how dangerous it is for the
grown up adult to then keep thinking "yeah, but my parents did the best you
could you know?" even though they completely destroyed his innate creativity
and freedom.

Alice Miller: The Drama of the Gifted Child

Alice Miller: The Body Never Lies

TLDR version of these books is that a large majority of parents tried to mold
them as children and fit them into boxes or supressed their needs and wants as
children and never truly listened to them. This then causes uncousious
guilt/anxiety/etc... feeling in the person as adult and prevents him from
"taking oportunities" etc..

And at the core of the issue is the forced-upon-us belief that we always have
to respect our parents, even though we secretely hate them. Saying "yeah but
they did something good for me you know" is actually a huge problem that will
only keep us from seeing the fact that many in fact do not like/love their
parents very much because the parents did not truly listen to them etc...

As long as we try to weight the good vs the bad moments we will relapse into
the false indoctrinated compassion/guilt towards our parents, into denial of
the cruelties we experienced as a child, all because people say that we should
try to "balance the good vs the bad". But this does not work in practice. This
balancing process seems to be a reflection of how we tried to cope as children
to survive. The adult must reject this balancing process because it only
causes confusion without resolving anything. Many people when they break
contact from parents feel guilty and think even more about their own parents:
the "experts" and her parents have reinforced the indoctrinated belief in this
person that "this individual has no right to his own life, feelings and
needs." It was this desire of the child to believe that the parents were good
that led to these supressions because the child blamed himself. This is why
when a therapists says "try to see the good" it will only cause great harm.
regression and confusion: since it was this need of the child to "try and see
the good" in his parents when there was none that caused these issues in the
first place.

So anyone who even slightly suspects that their parents supressed him as a
child and denied him freedom of expression etc... will find many answers in
those books above.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
One thing neither this article nor the linked study measure is if there is a
difference in this behavior between boys and girls. I looked through the
actual article to see if there was a statement that said if there was a
statistical difference between the two or not, but although they do specify
the numbers for the genders of the participants in the study, none of the
analysis does any comparison between the genders.

It would be fascinating to see if there are gender differences in this
behavior in childhood and adulthood and compare childhood and adulthood.

~~~
renewiltord
They weren't testing that hypothesis, so that's why they didn't do this. If
you go back and torture the data like this, you'll get acne from green
jellybeans.

~~~
jiggunjer
Not if you correct for multiple comparisons.

