Fig. 2: Participants show good task comprehension and ability to compare the expected value (EV) of different options in the context of our task.

Participants in all age groups a, d showed good task comprehension, b, e were able to indicate which pond in a pair was “better”—i.e., had a larger EV, and c, f were more likely to “fish” when EV was positive than negative. The top row shows the results for Experiment 1, the bottom row for Experiment 2 (replication). *** Wilcoxon Signed Rank two-tailed test with p < 0.001.