Don't you see the possibilities? Evidence that young preschoolers lack possibility concepts

Abstract

Preschoolers struggle to solve problems when they have to consider what might and might not happen. Instead of planning for all open possibilities, they simulate one possibility and treat it as the fact of the matter. Why this lapse in judgment? Are scientists asking them to solve problems that outstrip their executive capacity? Or do children lack the logical concepts needed to take multiple conflicting possibilities into account? To address this question, task demands were eliminated from an existing measure of children’s ability to think about mere possibilities. Seventy-four children aged 2.5 through 4.9 years were tested. Participants were highly motivated and engaged but could not solve the problem. A Bayesian analysis revealed strong evidence that reducing task demands while holding reasoning demands constant did not change performance. Children’s struggles with the task cannot be explained by these task demands. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that children struggle because they cannot deploy possibility concepts that allow them to mark representations as merely possible.

Many preschoolers don't distinguish the possible from the impossible in a marble-catching task

“…The results reconcile the conflicting findings from 3-container tasks (Mody & Carey 2016;Grigoroglou et al 2019;Leahy 2022) and the Y-shaped tube task (Redshaw & Suddendorf 2016). In 3-container tasks, participants choose a container from one of two sets: a singleton set, where the reward's location can be precisely inferred, and a pair, where the reward might be in either of two locations.…”

“…The 3 container results with older 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds, and 4-year-olds have proven highly robust, replicating quite exactly even when the task is implemented in quite different ways (Leahy 2022).…”

“…This hypothesis is contentious: many results seem to show that infants can represent possibilities as such (e.g., Teglas et al 2007, 2011, 2015, Cesana-Arlotti et al 2018, 2010, Goddu et al 2021, though alternative interpretations of these findings are available , Feiman, Mody & Carey 2022, Leahy 2022. Another serious challenge for this view is to explain how possibility concepts can arise in an individual that does not have them from the outset.…”

“…Combining the data from the Y-shaped tube task and the 2-box task, it seems that chimpanzees and most 36-month-olds can form plans that take multiple incompatible possibilities into account. But despite these successes, children and preschoolers perform poorly on the 3 container task and its variants (Mody & Carey 2016, Grigoroglou et al 2019, Leahy 2022, Engelmann et al 2022). In the basic task, participants are shown a stage with 3 containers, organized into two sets: a pair and a singleton.…”

“…Older 2-year-olds (range: 30-36 months) and chimpanzees choose the singleton 50% of the time (Mody & Carey 2016, Grigoroglou et al 2019, Engelmann et al 2022, Leahy 2022. Three-year-olds (range: 36-48 months) choose the singleton only 60% of the time, and 4-year-olds (range: 48-60 months) about 70% of the time.…”