Clarkson University Psychology Professor Andreas Wilke recently returned from a month-long trip to Japan, where he worked to expand his research on statistical thinking in children.
Wilke was an invitational guest researcher at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, where he worked with Professor Masanori Takezawa from the Department of Behavioral Science—an international expert in the areas of cultural evolution and adaptive decision-making. Wilke’s research with Takezawa during his visit is an extension of his work on the cognitive mechanisms underlying children’s perception of randomness, and their susceptibility to erroneous judgments. Wilke began this research in 2021 thanks to grant funding from the National Science Foundation.
“We are constructing computational models for investigating the role reinforcement and/or social learning might play in the context of how young children learn to grasp statistical regularities of their surrounding environments and what precise role evolved defaults in interpreting these statistical environments might play”, Wilke explains.
Wilke’s trip was funded by a grant from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). During his trip, Wilke interacted with various faculty, graduate and undergraduate students and presented at Hokkaido University’s Center for Experimental Research in Social Sciences Colloquium.
Wilke also attended the Human Behavior and Evolution Society meeting of Japan in Osaka where he presented his ongoing research as the only foreign speaker invited to the conference.