Children's developing ability to predict novel outcomes from variability information

Making abstract inferences from specific instances is a critical cognitive ability. Here, we examine children's capacity to use these inferences to reason beyond the evidence they observe. In three experiments, participants (N = 161, 46% female, 43% White) observed various colored balls randomly drawn from two opaque boxes and were asked to choose which box was more likely to contain a novel-colored ball. Younger preschoolers (M_age = 40.12 months, Experiment 1) chose the container that produced differently colored balls over one that produced balls of a single color, suggesting they made inferences about second-order characteristics (variability vs. uniformity), and used this to make novel predictions. When presented with more subtle contrasts (low- vs. high-variability, Experiments 2 and 3), older (M_age = 55.53 months), but not younger preschoolers, continued to make adult-like predictions, suggesting that these second-order inferences increase in sophistication during early childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).