Every day, adults conduct cost-benefit analyses in some form for decisions large and small, economic and personal: Bring a lunch or go out? Buy or rent? Remain single or start a family? All are balances of risk and reward.
According to psychologists, infants weigh risks and rewards, too, but appear to boil down their decision-making to this: Do I want to?
But according to a study published in the August print issue of the journal Cognition, it turns out that the decision-making process for older infants and toddlers is more nuanced than that.