Minimal representations of possibility at age 3

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Development
• Developmental Psychology
• Reasoning and Decision-Making

Background:

• Young children's planning abilities are limited.
• Children's understanding of possibility and uncertainty is not fully understood.
• Previous research suggests developmental differences in probabilistic reasoning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate why 3-year-olds do not always maximize expected reward in planning tasks.
• To examine whether 3-year-olds deploy possibility concepts like 'might'.
• To explore the nature of mental models 3-year-olds construct in uncertain situations.

Main Methods:

• Three studies were conducted involving 3-year-old children.
• Participants were presented with scenarios involving choices between single and paired occluded containers with hidden prizes.
• Tasks included choosing a container for reward and discarding a container to receive remaining contents.

Main Results:

• Three-year-olds chose the paired option approximately 50% of the time, not maximizing expected reward.
• Evidence suggests children did not use 'might' concepts to represent uncertainty in the paired containers.
• Children's choices were consistent with constructing overly specific mental models of the situation.
• In a discarding task, children predominantly discarded a container from the pair.

Conclusions:

• Three-year-olds may lack or be unable to deploy possibility concepts like 'might' during planning.
• Overly specific mental models, rather than a complete lack of concepts, may explain suboptimal choices.
• Performance demands of the tasks might hinder the deployment of existing possibility concepts.