How Children Judge the Possibility of Improbable and Impossible Events

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

It’s commonly believed that children think everything is possible, but the opposite is true: children think only ordinary events are possible; they deny the possibility of any event that violates their expectations, including events that are merely improbable, like owning a pet peacock or eating pickle-flavored ice cream (Shtulman & Carey, 2007; Lane et al., 2016; Goulding et al., 2022). This symposium will explore what information children use to judge possibility and how.

Presenter 1 will share research on the processing dynamics of children’s judgments. This research shows that children take as long to judge improbable events as adults, indicating that they are not less reflective but seek different information. Presenter 2 will share research on what information children use: causal knowledge of how improbable events might occur or real events that establish precedents for their occurrence. They find that children can use both types of information but with limited generalizability.

Next, Presenter 3 will present evidence that children’s judgments of possibility are sensitive to how regularities are treated within their culture. They will show that Chinese children deny the possibility of improbable events more than American children because they see these events as violating deontic obligations. Finally, Presenter 4 will present evidence that children rely on different considerations for assessing possibility in the context of magical events, such that children are more focused on perceptual similarity than adults are. Collectively, these studies clarify how children judge possibility and why those judgments differ from adults’.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chairs

• Ori Friedman, University of Waterloo

• Andrew E Shtulman, Occidental College

Individual Presentations

• The Development of Modal intuitions: A Test of Two Accounts - Presenting Author: Brandon Wade Goulding, University of Winnipeg; Farishteh Khan; Keisuke Fukuda; Jonathan D. Lane, Vanderbilt University; Samuel Ronfard, University of Toronto

• The Role of Causality and Similarity in Children’s Possibility Judgments: A Training Study - Presenting Author: Andrew E Shtulman, Occidental College

• Chinese and U.S. Children’s Possibility Judgments - Presenting Author: Jenny Nissel, University of Texas at Austin; Hui Li; Jacqueline D Woolley, University of Texas at Austin

• A Developmental Shift in Judgments About Relative Impossibility - Presenting Author: Zoe Tipper, University of Waterloo; Ori Friedman, University of Waterloo