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Decision-making is an integral part of life; however, little research has been done with regards to decision-making in young children. Across three studies, I investigated how response latencies and eye-movements were related to toddlers’ decision-making and to later developing metacognition. Study 1 examined whether toddlers response latency and eye-movement behaviors indicate awareness of decision difficulty or uncertainty. Results revealed that 25- to 32-month-olds had lower accuracy rates for harder decisions, responded more slowly during inaccurate trials, and switched their gaze between response options more frequently during harder decisions; suggesting that toddlers are indeed aware of decision difficulty. Study 2 examined whether responses latencies and eye-movements measured at 2 years of age were longitudinally related to emerging uncertainty monitoring at age 3. Results showed that gaze transitions in 25- to 32-month-olds, but not response latencies, were positively associated with uncertainty monitoring when they were 36- 60-months-old, suggesting that toddler’s visual exploration may help to provide a foundation for emerging uncertainty monitoring. Finally, Study 3 examined how 26- 32-month-olds use their memories in service of a goal. Results showed that when asked to report on their memories, only a subset of the toddlers showed reduced novelty preferences and high accuracy. An attentional manipulation reduced novelty preferences and increased gaze transitions and accuracy, suggesting that although attention to novelty seems to interfere with memory decisions, it can be countered with attentional manipulations.

A vast amount of research has been conducted to establish that infants and toddlers can form and retain memories and to understand the factors that underlie age-related improvements in memory. However, little research has focused on how decision processes influence memory performance. As toddlers begin to develop more language skills, adults increasingly ask them to utilize their memory and with this preregistration we wish to investigate how toddlers use their memories in service of a current goal. A previous study in our lab has shown that during a visual paired comparison paradigm, toddlers will choose the new image over the previously familiarized item due to their tendency to look at new images (novelty preferences). This tendency is reduced and their memory decisions are aided by a brief 5% change in the size of the old image, which results in a perceived brief flicker of that image. This suggests that disengaging the toddler’s gaze towards the new item may support memory decisions. With this preregistered study, we wish to accomplish two goals. 1. We wish to replicate these findings in a new sample of toddlers. 2. We wish to extend these findings and examine whether a flicker elsewhere on the screen (and not on the target) will suffice to disengage the toddlers’ attention and aid their memory decisions. Alternative hypotheses can be advanced depending on whether attention directed to the target is necessary to observe a benefit to decision making, or whether instead disengaging attention away from the novel stimulus suffices.

Longitudinal examination of the relation of behavioral indicators of uncertainty in toddlers to overt uncertainty monitoring in preschoolers.

Replicate previous study's findings and conduct several exploratory analyses.

This project examines how novelty preferences may interfere with toddlers' memory decisions.