Age differences in innovation strategies: Children favour exploration and adults prefer exploitation

Innovation plays a fundamental role in human cognitive development, yet the mechanisms by which it emerges in childhood are complex. Innovation abilities appear to emerge around age eight years, critiques of experimental work investigating innovation in children highlight issues with research designs being ill-structured and using a single trial, with a time limit and one dominant solution. This study examined children's and adults' problem-solving abilities in two tasks: the Hook Task, a well-established measure of innovation with a single dominant solution, and the Tub Transfer Task, which offers multiple possible solutions across six trials. We found that the Tub Transfer Task was easier for children to complete relative to the Hook Task, children successfully completed this task from 5 years, 7 months old. Moreover, children and adults approached the Tub Transfer Task differently. As well as preferring different types of strategy, children explored a range of different approaches over the six trials of the Tub Transfer Task whereas adults were more likely to exploit a single approach. This study highlights the differences in problem-solving approaches between children and adults and demonstrates young children are able to innovate on simple tasks. • Children and adults completed two innovation problem-solving tasks. • Children and adults used different problem-solving strategies. • Adults favoured an exploitative approach to problem solving. • Children favoured an explorative approach to problem solving.