Inferences and recall at ages four and seven

Inferences and recall at ages 4 and 7 were studied as a function of the cause of a target event, the presence and timing of questions prior to recall, and the type of inference demanded by the questions. 7-year-olds inferred and recalled well with stories containing any of the causal connections employed in the study. 4-year-olds performed better when physical causes, rather than either psychological causes or enabling relations, connected events. Timing of questions did not affect the 7-year-olds' inferences, but asking questions interfered with their recall. Questions about story events aided the 4-year-olds' ability to make inferences and to recall, especially when causal connections were least specified and when questions were asked following the story. 4- and 7-year-olds also differed in responding to demands for 3 specific types of inference. 4-year-olds produced significantly more unconstrained inferences than logical or constrained informational inferences. 7-year-olds were most responsive to logical inference questions, and produced significantly more logical than constrained inferences.     

Searching and planning: young children's reasoning about past and future event sequences

Six experiments examined children's ability to make inferences using temporal order information. Children completed versions of a task involving a toy zoo; one version required reasoning about past events (search task) and the other required reasoning about future events (planning task). Children younger than 5 years failed both the search and the planning tasks, whereas 5-year-olds passed both (Experiments 1 and 2). However, when the number of events in the sequence was reduced (Experiment 3), 4-year-olds were successful on the search task but not the planning task. Planning difficulties persisted even when relevant cues were provided (Experiments 4 and 5). Experiment 6 showed that improved performance on the search task found in Experiment 3 was not due to the removal of response ambiguity.     

Two levels of inferential behavior in young children.

5- and 6-year-old children made inferences about the spatial locations of animals and people in a series of 3 experiments. The tasks employed manipulable models to represent the spatial relations involved and were made as simple as possible. 2 levels of inferential behavior were found. The first constituted the ability to draw an inference consistent with information given, but with minimal understanding of the way in which inferences can assist in decisions between alternative outcomes. At the second level, children succeeded in discriminating inferences which were logically necessary from those which were merely consistent with the premises. Most 5-year-olds were at the first level, most 6-year-olds at the second level. 2 criteria for the identification of young children's behavior as inferential were established, and the results of the present study were discussed in terms of recent related work with both younger and older children.     

Developmental and individual differences in conditional reasoning: effects of logic instructions and alternative antecedents

In Study 1, 10-, 13-, and 16-year-olds were assigned to conditions in which they were instructed to think logically and provided alternative antecedents to the consequents of conditional statements. Providing alternatives improved reasoning on two uncertain logical forms, but decreased logical responding on two certain forms; logic instructions improved reasoning among adolescents. Correlations among inferences and verbal ability were found primarily when task conditions created conflict between automatic and controlled inferences. In Study 2, when the cognitive demands of the logic instructions were reduced, 10-year-olds made more logically correct inferences, but only when a conditional's consequents were strongly associated with alternative antecedents. Discussion focuses on the ability to inhibit invited inferences and the role of automatically activated memories.     

The development of forward search planning in preschoolers

Previous evidence suggesting that young children have some ability to plan by means of forward search suffers from typical findings that individual performance is inconsistent and group performance is low. In the present study, evidence is sought that children's imperfect performance results from unstable execution of the correct component processes of forward search, rather than from use of flawed or incomplete rules. 4- and 5-year-olds participated in a route-planning task in which they collected items from several locations in a large space. Incorrect routes required having to backtrack to locations previously visited. Forward search in this task required 3 component processes: representing a possible route, evaluating the route for backtracking, and if necessary, repeating the procedure for an alternate route. Evidence from stochastic parameter estimation and from children's self-corrections and explanations showed that 5-year-olds engaged in forward search, but that 4-year-olds used only a rudimentary form of forward search. Developmental changes involved children's ability to foresee and avoid backtracking, to consider alternate routes, and to spontaneously self-correct errors. Results are discussed in terms of implications for our understanding of the structure and development of early problem-solving skills in general.     

Knowledge, Concepts, and Inferences in Childhood

The role of knowledge in children's inferences was investigated in 3 experiments. Experiment 1 examined developmental changes in the role of categorical membership, perceptual appearance, and item complexity in inferences for natural kind and artifact concepts. Preschoolers (5-year-olds), second graders (8-year-olds), and fourth graders (10-year-olds) were taught novel properties about target concepts and asked whether each of 4 probes had those properties. Probes varied in category membership and perceptual appearance relative to the target item. Item complexity also varied. Experiments 2 and 3 examined inferences with known and unknown concepts for familiar and unfamiliar properties. Older children's knowledge led to differential weighting of categorical information over appearance but only for known concepts and/or familiar properties. Preschoolers made no distinction between category and appearance for either known or unknown concepts. Additionally, as target item complexity increased, older children made more inferences than preschoolers. No differences between inferences about natural kind and artifact concepts were found. The role of theories and knowledge in children's drawing of inferences is discussed.     

Children's Understanding of Logical Inconsistency

Five experiments involving 245 participants examined children's understanding of logical consistency. For instance, a character said that a man was both tall and very short. Only by 6 years of age did children show any understanding of logical inconsistency. This occurred despite: (1) good memory for the characters' claims; (2) the use of three different question forms including whether a person had made sense, said something silly, or whether both things a person said could be right; (3) the ability to identify other types of statements (e.g., factual inconsistencies) as not making sense; (4) the ability to compare and contrast the characters' claims in other ways; and (5) attempts to deepen children's processing of the claims by asking them to draw what each character said. Similar to false belief understanding, there was a monotonic relation between the number of older siblings a child had and logical consistency understanding on one of the tasks. It is argued that children may fail the different consistency tasks because of both logical factors (e.g., insufficient insight into logical necessity) and nonlogical factors tied to their social knowledge or insight into representation.     

Young children's comprehension of montage

2 studies examined children's comprehension of brief stop-animation televised segments incorporating elements of cinematic montage such as pans, zooms, and cuts. Children reconstructed the action and dialogue in these segments using the same dolls and settings depicted. In Study 1, there was no effect of cinematic techniques on reconstruction performance of 3- and 5-year-olds as compared to control segments filmed without these techniques. The results challenged the assumption that the use of such techniques per se contributes to young children's poor comprehension of television shows. In Study 2, 12 new segments were produced in which comprehending the montage required inferences of character perspective, implied action sequences, spatial relationships, and simultaneity of different actions. Averaging across all segments, 62% of the 4-year-olds and 88% of the 7-year-olds demonstrated clear comprehension of the montage. Inferences concerning implied action sequences were easiest for both ages. Inferences of simultaneity were most difficult for 4-year-olds, whereas inferences of character perspective were most difficult for 7-year-olds. Preschool children are thus capable of understanding cinematic events conveyed through camera techniques and film editing, despite previous assertions to the contrary. This ability nevertheless substantially increases with age.     

Inference generation, story comprehension, and language skills in the preschool years

Several researchers have shown that children’s ability to make inferences is related to their reading comprehension. The majority of research on this topic has been conducted on older children. However, given the recent focus on the importance of narrative comprehension in prereaders, the current study examined the relationship between inference making and story comprehension in 4- to 5-year-olds. We examined children’s online inferences while narrating a wordless book as well as children’s story comprehension of a different storybook. We found that children’s total number of inferences was significantly related to their story comprehension. Three types of inferences were significantly related to story comprehension—characters goals, actions that achieved those goals, and character states. In a hierarchical regression controlling for children’s age and expressive vocabulary, a composite of these three inference types significantly predicted children’s story comprehension.     

Heider's foreseeability level of responsibility attribution: does it come after intentionality?

A conceptual analysis of Heider's level 3 foreseeability rule for the attribution of responsibility suggests that it is more difficult than levels 2 (commission) and 4 (intentionality) because it requires forms of reasoning ascribed to Piaget's formal operational thought. Thus, the rule should be acquired in early adolescence, or later. Previous studies showing foreseeability attributions in younger children have been confounded by the fact that their stimulus materials required an inference of intentionality. The present study, of 5-15-year-olds, avoided this confound by using an "omniscient narrator" technique to control the children's inferences of intent. The results suggest that children first employ Heider's commission rule, then his intentionality rule, and finally adopt the foreseeability rule at about 11 years. The study did not assess whether or not foreseeability attribution is a "stage" in the sense of Piaget's formal operational thought.     

The development of distrust

Preschool-age children's reasoning about the reliability of deceptive sources was investigated. Ninety 3- to 5-year-olds watched several trials in which an informant gave advice about the location of a hidden sticker. Informants were either helpers who were happy to give correct advice, or trickers who were happy to give incorrect advice. Three-year-olds tended to accept all advice from both helpers and trickers. Four-year-olds were more skeptical but showed no preference for advice from helpers over trickers, even though they differentiated between helpers and trickers on metacognitive measures. Five-year-olds systematically preferred advice from helpers. Selective trust was associated with children's ability to make mental state inferences.     

Acquiring Color Names via Linguistic Contrast: The Influence of Contrasting Terms

Linguistic contrast of the form "It's not X; it's Y" is often used by adults to correct children's naming errors. The present studies examined whether such linguistic contrast could help preschoolers learn a novel color name. In Experiment 1, a novel color term was contrasted only once with 1 or 2 familiar color names. Contrasting a new color term with children's own label for the stimulus color helped 5-year-olds learn the new term, but contrasting the new term with randomly chosen familiar color terms did not. For 4-year-olds, neither kind of contrast helped much. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that when the contrastive information was presented more than once, even 3- and 4-year-olds performed much like the 5-year-olds in Experiment 1. Together, these findings suggest that contrasting a new term with a child's own term facilitates the acquisition of the new term, perhaps because it gives the child specific information about how two terms are related in meaning.     

Young children's causal inferences

We report 2 experiments that show a striking development between the ages of 3 and 4 years in children's ability to make causal inferences about sequences of events. The task in the first experiment was to work out what had caused the change to an object that started out as odd (noncanonical) in 1 way and ended up as odd in 2 ways--starting, for example, as a broken cup and ending as a wet and broken cup. When asked to choose the instrument that had caused the change, 3-year-olds often selected the instrument that could have caused the initial state (a hammer, in our example) and not the instrument that would produce the change. 4-year-olds hardly ever made this mistake. In the second experiment, the 3-year-olds were able to make the correct choice when the change was from a canonical to a noncanonical state (cup-wet cup) but had much more difficulty when the change was from noncanonical to canonical (wet cup-dry cup). The difference was much smaller in the older group. The first of these tasks can be solved simply on the basis of knowledge that a particular instrument can cause a particular effect without reference to the initial state. The second task requires attention to the differences between initial and final state. We conclude that the ability to make genuine causal inferences develops between the ages of 3 and 4 years.     

Masking of Children's Early Understanding of the Representational Mind: Backwards Explanation versus Prediction

3–5-year-olds heard a story involving identical twins, one of whom was absent when their ball was moved from one drawer to another. Children found it easy to infer that the twin who later went to the original location to get the ball was the one who had gone outside. Children in a comparison condition found it relatively difficult to predict where a (nonidentical) twin who was absent when the ball was moved, would search for the ball, and made the usual realist error. In further investigations involving variations on the identical twins task, children were equally successful at making the link between looking in the wrong place and having been absent, whether a backwards inference was required (as above) or a forwards one (inferring that the twin who went outside must now be the one who was at the wrong location). We ruled out one twin's physical association with the correct location as an artifactual explanation for facilitation. Children performed well whether or not the experimenter told them explicitly which twin did not know the ball had been moved. These findings support the view that children's early insight into the representational character of mind is masked in traditional prediction tests of false belief.     

Children's thinking about counterfactuals and future hypotheticals as possibilities

Two experiments explored whether children's correct answers to counterfactual and future hypothetical questions were based on an understanding of possibilities. Children played a game in which a toy mouse could run down either 1 of 2 slides. Children found it difficult to mark physically both possible outcomes, compared to reporting a single hypothetical future event, "What if next time he goes the other way ..." (Experiment 1: 3-4-year-olds and 4-5-year-olds), or a single counterfactual event, "What if he had gone the other way ...?" (Experiment 2: 3-4-year-olds and 5-6-year-olds). An open counterfactual question, "Could he have gone anywhere else?," which required thinking about the counterfactual as an alternative possibility, was also relatively difficult.     

The Use of Trait Labels in Making Psychological Inferences

Three studies investigated children's capacity to use trait labels as tools for making inferences about mental states. For example, knowledge that a story character is "nice" as opposed to "mean" could lead to predictions that the character would respond with greater negative affect upon discovering that his or her action had made someone upset. Study 1 (N = 48) examined whether participants (kindergartners, second graders, fifth graders, and adults) would make different psychological inferences based on whether a character was labeled as "nice" versus "mean." Study 2 (N = 30) examined the same issue with 4-year-olds using a simpler methodology. Study 3 (N = 30) extended the results of Study 2, by examining whether describing characters as "shy" versus "not shy" would lead 4-year-olds to make different mental state inferences. Taken together, these findings suggest that even for young children, trait labels can serve as a basis for making nonobvious inferences. Developmental differences are discussed.     

The role of language, appearance, and culture in children's social category-based induction

Four studies examined whether Israeli 5-year-olds (N = 88) and adults (N = 48) drew inferences about psychological properties based on a character's social category, personality trait, or physical appearance trait. Study 1 revealed that while children drew inferences mostly by social category, adults did it by personality trait. Study 2 showed that the children's pattern was not due to how the categorical information was conveyed. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated that for kindergarteners, labels, not appearances, are determinant of the inductive potential of social categories. Studies indicated that "Jew" and "Arab" were the most inductively powerful social categories for both children and adults. The results carry implications for the roles of language, appearances, and culture in the conceptualization of "human kinds."     

The development of children's ability to fill the gaps in their knowledge by consulting experts

This research investigated children's ability to recognize gaps in their knowledge and seek missing information from appropriate informants. In Experiment 1, forty-five 4- and 5-year-olds were adept in assigning questions from 3 domains (medicine, firefighting, and farming) to corresponding experts (doctor, firefighter, or farmer). However, when given the options of answering the same questions themselves or assigning them to an expert (Experiment 2), only 6-year-olds were consistently able to recognize when they did not know answers and then assign test questions correctly. Four- and 5-year-olds tended to overestimate their own knowledge or assign questions to the wrong expert. This result was replicated in Experiment 3, in which 5-year-olds were given incentives for correct answers.     

God does not play dice: causal determinism and preschoolers' causal inferences

Three studies investigated children's belief in causal determinism. If children are determinists, they should infer unobserved causes whenever observed causes appear to act stochastically. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds saw a stochastic generative cause and inferred the existence of an unobserved inhibitory cause. Children traded off inferences about the presence of unobserved inhibitory causes and the absence of unobserved generative causes. In Experiment 2, 4-year-olds used the pattern of indeterminacy to decide whether unobserved variables were generative or inhibitory. Experiment 3 suggested that children (4 years old) resist believing that direct causes can act stochastically, although they accept that events can be stochastically associated. Children's deterministic assumptions seem to support inferences not obtainable from other cues.     

Realizing that you don't understand: elementary school children's awareness of inconsistencies.

2 factors were proposed to affect awareness of one's comprehension failure: the inferential processing requirements, and the kind of standards against which comprehension is evaluated. These studies investigated elementary school children's awareness of their own comprehension failure when presented with inconsistent information. Study 1 showed that children were more likely to notice explicit than implicit contradictions. However, even 12-year-olds judged as comprehensible a sizable proportion of essays with seemingly obvious inconsistencies. Yet, the children had good probed recall of the information, the logical capacity to draw the inferences, and were not generally reluctant to question the experimenter. In subsequent studies children were (a) asked to repeat sentences in order to guarantee that the 2 inconsistent propositions were concurrently activated in working memory, and (b) warned about the existence of a problem in order to promote more careful evaluation. Taken together, the results suggest that to notice inconsistencies children have to encode and store the information, draw the relevant inferences, retrieve and maintain the (inferred) propositions in working memory, and compare them. Third through sixth graders do not spontaneously carry out those processes that they are capable of carrying out.