Reasoning About Possibilities in Preschool Children: the Advantage of the Equiprobable

• In Event: Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Topic - Cognitive Processes

Abstract

When and how children become able to plan for multiple alternatives is subject to debate. Redshaw et al. (2018) suggested that young children could lack the capacity to represent multiple mutually exclusive possibilities in parallel. In their paradigm, participants had to catch a ball falling from an inverted Y-shaped pipe. Only children older than 4 years of age arrived to the conclusion that it is necessary to consider all alternatives in order to guarantee success. While they were more likely to cover both exits to make sure they catch the ball, three-year-olds failed the task by covering only one exit.

We replicated this study with a modified design that lowers demands for motor coordination (Experiment 1 & 2). In our design, the inverted Y tube was presented on a touchscreen: Children could catch the ball by moving a basket under an inverted Y-shaped pipe. In order to maximise their success, children had to place the basket exactly under the two openings, as the exit location of the ball was unpredictable. While four-year-olds (N=16) were more likely to position the basket accurately than three-year-olds (N=16), we found that both age groups performed better than chance. The results suggest that bimanual motor coordination required by the earlier experiments may be a factor masking the performance of the younger participants.

A crucial aspect of the Y-tube task is that the two possibilities are equiprobable in nature. Can children reason about possible outcomes that are not equal? In a further manipulation of the task (Experiment 3; N=16), we gave preschool (4-year-olds) children the chance to catch a ball dropped into a tube system that had branching arms: after a first bifurcation, one arm had another bifurcation. This solution resulted in three bottom openings such that the ball had a greater chance of exiting one of the tube outlets than the other two. While 4-year-olds had no difficulty in developing optimal interventions in Experiment 1, their performance dropped to chance level when they were given the opportunity to combine unequal possibilities. Our findings reveal that children have difficulties in dealing with possibilities that are not equal, suggesting that the capacity to reason about possibilities continues to develop during the late preschool period.

Authors

• Neha Khetrapal, Central European University
  Presenting Author

• Erno Teglas, Central European University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Peter Racz, Central European University
  Non-Presenting Author