1/4/10.5 in arithmetic progression
Answers
Why might this be so? If you think about it for a moment, as the investigators did, it becomes apparent that information which stipulates that you did something wrong is more complicated than information stipulating that you did something well. So younger children may simply have an easier time processing simpler, positive, rewarding information than negative feedback. As the authors noted, "Learning from mistakes is more complex than carrying on in the same way as before. You have to ask yourself what precisely went wrong and how it was possible." That is, it takes more analysis to figure out that what was done is mistaken than that it is correct.
What remains unknown is exactly what accounts for the change in brain functioning and how it occurs. Do new connections within or between brain regions emerge during the transition to adolescence? Do hormones associated with puberty play a role? Like all good research, this elegant work raises new questions at the same time that it reveals new things.
We now have a better idea why rewards work better than punishment with pre-adolescent children. The task that still remains, of course, is regulating one's own irritability, frustration and thus behavior in the face of annoying child behavior, so that we can ignore it.