Many organisms encounter situations where they lackinformation required to successfully exploit a resource. Onestable strategy that may be particularly useful is a win-stay-lose-shift strategy, in which an individual continues toperform a behavior that has proven fruitful in the recent pastor otherwise shifts to a new behavior. Here we investigatewhether domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) use a win-stay-lose-shift strategy utilizing data from 326 puppies and 323 adultdogs on a repeated object-choice task. We found a significanteffect of previous-trial success on dogs’ subsequent searchpatterns. Specifically, dogs were more likely to shift searchlocations if they were unsuccessful on the previous trial.These findings suggest that puppies and adult dogs win-stay-lose-shift.

Like scientists, children must find ways to explain causal systems in the world. The Bayesian approach to cognitive development holds that children evaluate explanations by applying a normative set of statistical learning and hypothesis-testing mechanisms to the evidence they observe. Here, we argue for certain supplements to this approach. In particular, we demonstrate in two studies that children, like adults, have a robust latent scope bias that conflicts with the laws of probability. When faced with two explanations equally consistent with observed data, where one explanation made an unverified prediction, children consistently preferred the explanation that did not make this prediction (Experiment 1). The bias can be overridden by strong prior odds, indicating that children can integrate cues from multiple sources of evidence (Experiment 2). We argue that children, like adults, rely on heuristics for making explanatory judgments which often lead to normative responses, but can lead to systematic error.

Mathematics is critical for making sense of the world. Yet,little is known about how people evaluate mathematicalexplanations. Here, we use an explanatory reasoning taskto investigate the intuitive structure of mathematics. Weshow that people evaluate arithmetic explanations bybuilding mental proofs over the conceptual structure ofintuitive arithmetic, evaluating those proofs using criteriasimilar to those of professional mathematicians.Specifically, we find that people prefer explanationsconsistent with the conceptual order of the operations(“9÷3=3 because 3 ́3=9” rather than “3 ́3=9 because9÷3=3”), and corresponding to simpler proofs (“9÷3=3because 3 ́3=9” rather than “9÷3=3 because 3+3+3=9”).Implications for mathematics cognition and education arediscussed.