CCN meeting | Kate Nussenbaum (Boston University, United States), invited by Senne Braem

Adaptive learning across development

In life’s first two decades, children who know little about the world grow into young adults who harness rich knowledge of environmental structure to guide their behavior and accomplish their goals. In my talk, I will argue that the development of goal-directed behavior depends on learning to learn. I will present a series of studies examining how the computations and neural mechanisms that underlie value-guided memory, flexible reinforcement learning, and strategic exploration change from childhood to adulthood, and enable individuals to increasingly tailor their behaviors to the demands of varied environments across development.