Teaching three-and-a-half-year-olds to revise their beliefs given ambiguous evidence

Abstract

Previous research suggests that three-year-olds fail to learn from statistical data when their prior beliefs conflict with evidence. Are children’s beliefs entrenched in their folk theories, or can preschoolers rationally update their beliefs? Motivated by a Bayesian account, we conducted a training study to investigate this question. Children (45 months) who failed to endorse a statistically more probable (but a priori unlikely) cause following ambiguous evidence were assigned to a Statistical Reasoning training, one of two Prior Belief trainings (Base Rates, Mechanisms), or a Control condition. Relative to the Control, children in the trainings were more likely to endorse the a priori unlikely variable on a free-explanation task. Critically, children in the Statistical Reasoning condition passed this task, even though their only information about the belief-violating variable came from ambiguous evidence. This suggests that statistical reasoning training improves preschoolers’ ability to learn even from data inconsistent with their prior beliefs.

Rational Higher‐Order Belief Revision in Young Children

“…Similarly, 3‐year‐olds, in contrast to older children, failed to endorse psychosomatic causes and instead continued to demonstrate a strong bias towards the domain‐appropriate cause. Younger children only revised their beliefs after a 2‐week training, during which they were taught to reason about statistical evidence (Bonawitz, Fisher, & Schulz, ). This is consistent with other evidence suggesting that 3‐year‐olds are relatively inflexible.…”