Might and might not: Children's conceptual development and the acquisition of modal verbs

Leahy, Brian; Zalnieriunas, Eimantas

doi:10.3765/salt.v31i0.5082

“…So it is unclear whether their correct responses to questions about what can happen reflect comprehension. While existing published results show that only a small proportion of 4-yearolds differentiate 'can' from 'have to' (Leahy & Zalnieriunas 2022), followup studies from our lab indicate that about half of 4-year-olds differentiate these verbs.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 78%

“…The second line of convergent evidence comes from children's comprehension of possibility talk. While children produce possibility vocabulary by age 2 (Cournane 2020), there is little or no sign of comprehension in children younger than 4 (see Leahy & Zalnieriunas 2022 for a review). Furthermore, many 4-year-olds respond correctly to questions about what can happen, but then give the same pattern of responses to questions about what has to happen.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Leahy¹

2022

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

“…Evidence from language acquisition converges with this hypothesis. While children produce possibility vocabulary by age 2 (Cournane, 2020), there is little evidence of comprehension in children younger than 4 (Leahy & Zalnieriunas, 2022). Furthermore, while most 4‐year‐olds respond correctly to questions about what can happen, many give the same pattern of responses to questions about what has to happen.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, while most 4‐year‐olds respond correctly to questions about what can happen, many give the same pattern of responses to questions about what has to happen. So, their correct responses to questions about what can happen may not reflect comprehension (Leahy & Zalnieriunas, 2022). Unpublished follow‐ups from our lab indicate that about half of 4‐year‐olds appropriately differentiate “can” from “have to,” converging with the success rate observed in the current study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Don't you see the possibilities? Young preschoolers may lack possibility concepts

Leahy

¹

2023

Developmental Science

Self Cite

17

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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? 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. One hundred nineteen 2.5‐ to 4.9‐year‐olds were tested. Participants were highly motivated but could not solve the problem. 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.Research Highlights Preschoolers are surprisingly irrational when faced with problems that ask them to consider what might and might not be the case. These irrationalities could arise from deficits in children's logical reasoning capacities or from extraneous task demands. This paper describes three plausible task demands. A new measure is introduced that preserves logical reasoning demands while eliminating all three extraneous task demands. Eliminating these task demands does not change performance. These task demands are not likely a cause of children's irrational behavior.

show abstract

“…Helpfully, an experiment that is structurally identical to the proposed modification of the gumball task has recently been conducted by Leahy and Zalnieriunas (2022). In this task (see Fig.…”

Section: Selecting Actions Conditional On Possible Future Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decomposing modal thought

Phillips¹,

Kratzer²

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Cognitive scientists have become increasingly interested in understanding how natural minds represent and reason about possible ways the world may be. However, there is currently little agreement on how to understand this remarkable capacity for ‘modal thought’. Drawing on formal frameworks for reasoning about possibilities from logic, philosophy, computer science, and linguistics, we argue that this capacity is built from a set of relatively simple component parts, centrally involving a basic ability to consider possible extensions of a piece of the actual world. Natural minds can productively combine this basic ability with a range of other capacities, eventually allowing for the observed suite of increasingly more sophisticated ways of reasoning about what is possible. We demonstrate how this (de)compositional account can accurately predict both what has been observed in the trajectory of children’s developing capacity to reason about possibilities and what has been observed in how modal thought is expressed within and across natural languages. Our hope is that this framework will provide cognitive scientists with a more systematic way of understanding variation in actuality-directed modal thought and talk, which will serve as the beginnings of a common language that allows researchers across disciplines to better understand each other.

show abstract

Might and might not: Children's conceptual development and the acquisition of modal verbs

Cited by 8 publications

References 13 publications

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

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

Don't you see the possibilities? Young preschoolers may lack possibility concepts

Decomposing modal thought

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About