Abstract
Children spend a substantial amount of time seeking knowledge about the world around them. What are the rules that guide this search and how do they alter with development? The PhD project will use computational methods to investigate the mechanisms of information search behaviour from a developmental perspective. Using fMRI we will examine the neural signals that represent the value of information in the brain’s reward system. In addition, we will use physiological measures such as SCR to measure arousal, and eye tracking to determine where children are searching and to examine arousal via pupil dimension.
References
Sharot, T. & Sunstein C.R., (2020). How People Decide What They Want to Know. Nature Human Behaviou
Charpentier, C., Bromberg-Martin E., & Sharot T. (2018) Valuation of Knowledge and Ignorance in Mesolimbic Reward Circuitry. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(31), E7255-E7264.r, 1-6.
Vellani, V., de Vries, L.P., Gaule, A., Sharot, T. (2020). A selective effect of dopamine on information-seeking. eLife, 9, e59152.
Moutsiana, C., Garrett, N., Clarke, R.C., Lotto, R.B., Blakemore, S.J. & Sharot, T. (2013) Human development of the ability to learn from bad news. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(41), 16396–16401.