Poster #8 - How do young children act on mutually exclusive possible events in the present and future?

• In Event: Poster Session 20

Abstract

Preparing for multiple, mutually exclusive possible future events is crucial for decision making and planning. Previous research (e.g. Redshaw & Suddendorf, 2016) tested the emergence of this ability by asking children to catch a ball that will be dropped into an inverted y-shaped tube, such that it is possible for the ball to come out of either the left or right exit of the tube, but not both. To solve this task successfully, children must run complex mental simulations of the possible future actions of ball, and use these simulations to generate a plan to catch the marble. While 4-year-olds use the optimal strategy of placing their hands under both openings (guaranteeing the catch), 3-year-olds often use a suboptimal strategy of placing their hands under only one side, a finding that is taken to indicate that 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, are able to reason about and act on multiple, mutually-exclusive future possibilities. However, the y-shaped tube task requires two levels of simulation: thinking about the future, and thinking about mutual exclusivity. Here, we investigated 3- and 4-year-olds’ reasoning about multiple, mutually exclusive possibilities using similar task conditions, but at different temporal points – before the marble is dropped, which requires reasoning about where the marble could be in the future, and after the marble is dropped, which requires reasoning about where the marble could be now.

We modified the inverted y-shaped tube by adding two black boxes covering both openings of the tube (Figure 1). In an Future condition (currently n=33 of target n=48; 3-year-old M=42.9 months; 4-year-old M=55.1), the bottoms of the boxes were open, such that a marble dropped from the top of the tube would immediately fall from one or the other opening (analogous to Redshaw & Suddendorf, 2016). In a Present condition (currently n=39 of target n=48; 3-year-old M=43.6 months; 4-year-old M=52.8), the bottoms of the boxes were covered with a removable lid, such that a ball dropped into the tube fell into one of the boxes. The lids could then be quickly removed simultaneously by the experimenter, causing the ball to drop. We measured how children prepared to catch the marble either before it was dropped (Future condition) or after it was dropped but before the box lids were opened (Present condition).

Data collection is ongoing, but currently several trends are emerging (Figure 2). Children’s behavior in the Future condition was comparable to Redshaw & Suddendorf (2016), in which 4-year-olds use the optimal strategy more than 3-year-olds (although we observed an overall decrease in performance in both age groups relative to previous work, perhaps due to the increased visual complexity of the apparatus with the inclusion of the boxes). However, in the Present condition, 3-year-olds used the optimal strategy more often compared to their Future condition age counterparts, while 4-year-olds’ performance was similar to their age counterparts in the Future condition. These findings suggest that the ability to act on multiple, mutually-exclusive present possibilities may emerge earlier than the ability to act on future possibilities.

Authors

• Esra Nur Turan-Küçük, Boston University
  Presenting Author

• Melissa M. Kibbe, Boston University