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<p>Humans develop the ability to navigate social environments by recognizing others’ behavioral patterns, which evolve across development. We asked how children adapt their learning strategies to opponents in a social dilemma (Chicken game), focusing on trial-by-trial, opponent-sensitive adaptation. Study 1 included preschoolers, while Study 2 examined school-age children and adolescents. Across ages, children adjusted their choices to their opponents, showing more cooperative behavior (“Swerve” choices) against high-competitive opponents and more competitive behavior (“Go straight” choices) against low-competitive opponents. Reinforcement learning model comparison suggested age-related changes in the relative support for reward-based versus belief-based accounts. These findings provide computational evidence consistent with developmental changes in how children adapt to competitive versus cooperative partners.</p>

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Learning to adaptively cooperate through social interactions during childhood and adolescence

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

    开放获取

  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月4日

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  • Rong Zhang,
  • Lei Zhang,
  • Xin-Min Hao,
  • Jean-Claude Dreher,
  • Chen Qu

摘要

Humans develop the ability to navigate social environments by recognizing others’ behavioral patterns, which evolve across development. We asked how children adapt their learning strategies to opponents in a social dilemma (Chicken game), focusing on trial-by-trial, opponent-sensitive adaptation. Study 1 included preschoolers, while Study 2 examined school-age children and adolescents. Across ages, children adjusted their choices to their opponents, showing more cooperative behavior (“Swerve” choices) against high-competitive opponents and more competitive behavior (“Go straight” choices) against low-competitive opponents. Reinforcement learning model comparison suggested age-related changes in the relative support for reward-based versus belief-based accounts. These findings provide computational evidence consistent with developmental changes in how children adapt to competitive versus cooperative partners.