神经科学与心理学2016nature.com
不确定性表征不足时学习表现的年龄差异
Age differences in learning from an insufficient representation of uncertainty
入门 · 约 45 分钟读完前置知识：概率学习基础、认知心理学基础
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这篇论文研究年龄差异如何影响人在不确定性表征不足情况下的学习能力。核心发现是：年长者学习能力下降并非年龄本身所致，而是因为他们更倾向于认为自己已经掌握了情况、低估了环境中的不确定性，从而减少了学习。
HN 关注点：这一结论对'年龄导致认知衰退'这一常见假设的挑战，以及如何区分真正的认知差异与动机、态度差异。
HN 评论精选
这几条评论里：支持 2 质疑 1 补充 1
支持认为年龄带来的学习衰退源于对环境细节的忽视，需有意识保持对不确定性的敏感
人变老后，出于熟悉感，大脑会过滤掉周围大部分事物，因此对环境细节变得迟钝，失去好奇心，思维逐渐僵化。我年轻时常纳闷为什么成年人学东西显得那么'笨'，我觉得这是重要原因。要想老了思维依然敏锐，就必须有意识地关注环境细节，并敏锐意识到日常生活中无处不在的不确定性——这就是'变笨的成年人'和70岁仍思维如刀锋般锐利的人之间的区别。
iliketosleep查看英文原文
As people get older, their minds tend to filter out most things around them as a consequence of familiarity. Hence, they become oblivious to details of their environment. They lose their sense of wonder and their minds become less active and eventually stale. When I was young, I often wondered why adults seemed so "stupid" when it came to learning things, and I do think this is a big part of it. As we get older, it's necessary to make a conscious effort to pay attention to details of our environment, and to be acutely aware of the great uncertainty found all around us, even in everyday life. This is the difference between a person who becomes a "stupid" adult, and one whose mind is still sharp as a razor at age 70.
支持学习变差不是年龄本身所致，而是'自以为已知道'的心态
TLDR：如果你觉得自己已经什么都知道了（或不需要学某样东西），那你就学得更差。年长者更常满足上述前提，从而得出上述结论。这意味着：较差的学习表现并非年龄本身的后果。
dmichulke查看英文原文
TLDR; If you think you know everything already (or you don't need to learn something) then you learn less well. Older people are more often fulfilling the above premises, and thereby the above conclusion. This means: Worse learning performance is not a consequence of age per se.
质疑质疑实验结果可能只是年长者对测试缺乏兴趣，而非认知差异
这篇文章很发人深省。但我怀疑他们如何排除一种可能性：年长者根本不像年轻人那样在乎一个虚构的测试。我随年龄增长，越来越难对假设性场景产生兴趣，或把别人的议程当作头等大事。所以年长者可能只是因为不在乎测试而考得更差。如果真是这样，现实中未必成立——除非年长者显得不聪明，其实是因为他们觉得你要教的东西无关紧要。
whiddershins查看英文原文
This article is really thought provoking. One thing I wonder, though, is how they can ever adjust for the strong possibility older adults just can't care about a make-believe test the way younger people might. My observation, as I age, is I have a harder and harder time getting interested in hypothetical scenarios, or taking on someone else's agenda as being super important. So I really wonder if older adults just test worse than younger people, simply because they care less about the test. If that's true, it wouldn't hold in the real world. Except that older people can seem less smart, when in reality they think whatever you're trying to get them to learn is not important in the grand scheme of things.
补充提出进化视角：对不确定性不敏感可能是减少决策瘫痪的适应性
似乎没人从另一个角度看：为什么老年人对不确定性'失明'反而是进化优势？我猜随着年龄增长，做出决定的重要性上升，哪怕不是最优决定。也许这是减少成年人'分析瘫痪'、提高自给自足能力的进化适应？有趣的是大家都急着去'修复'它，这很能反映这里的文化。
bakhy查看英文原文
nobody seems interested in looking at the thing from the other perspective - why was it an evolutionary advantage for older people to develop this uncertainty-blindness? i would guess that perhaps with age the importance of making a decision rises, even if not the best decision. perhaps it's an evolutionary adaptation to reduce analysis-paralysis in developed adults and improve their self-sufficiency? in any case, it's interesting how we all jumped to "fixing" it. a cute reflection of the culture here.
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