Economics of perceptual and motor decisions in childhood

This collection includes data from a series of laboratory behavioural experiments. The experiments investigate several aspects of perception, action and decision-making during development, comparing the decisions of children and adults with the predictions of ideal-observer models. The experiments are described in full in journal articles. In the case of articles that are still in preparation, conference abstracts and presentations are provided.<p>Over the course of a normal day we make countless risky perceptual-motor decisions, from when to cross a busy road to how to reach across a coffee cup without knocking it over. Such decisions involve an interplay between perceptual, motor and variables that can be difficult to quantify.Yet everyday safety, health and wellbeing depend on computing when and how to move. Such computations may be sub-optimal in childhood.
This project will study children's perceptual-motor decision-making using newly developed experimental tasks and a mathematical framework that tests which outcomes agents are seeking to maximise.

The goal is to investigate children's abilities to choose optimal movement strategies by taking their own perceptual and motor capabilities into account. This relates to real-world problems of choosing safe courses of action. By using a 'decision-making' framework, it will be possible to study children's perceptual and motor choices in more detail than before. Separately varying and evaluating perceptual, motor, and 'cost' components of perceptual and motor decisions in laboratory tasks will make it possible to investigate what goes into the decision process and why its outcomes in children may be different to those in adults.</p>