The development of the representativeness heuristic in young children

Gualtieri, Samantha

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2018.05.006

Cited by 19 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…At age 4, children relied on the skewed base-rate information in their judgements in Experiment 1, providing responses that did not differ statistically from the base-rate value and that did differ from chance. These findings are in line with previous work showing that four-year-olds provide responses that are more aligned with observed statistical data, suggesting that they use a more data-driven approach than older children and adults (Gualtieri & Denison, 2018; Lucas et al, 2014; Seiver et al, 2013). However, four-year-olds were not sensitive to manipulations of individuating information strength, and their performance was inconclusive when base-rates were uninformative in Experiment 2a.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Regardless of the inconclusive nature of four-year-olds’ performance, in a period of two years, children develop a preference for individuating information, as evidenced by six-year-olds’ reliance on the strong piece of individuating information that conflicted with a base-rate. It is possible that six-year-olds have a more general preference for individuating information due to having developed a stronger prior belief regarding the importance of traits and personality descriptions in predicting behavior (Boseovski et al, 2013; Boseovski & Lee, 2006; Kalish & Shiverick, 2004), because they have also shown preferences for personality information over statistical data in prior work (Gualtieri & Denison, 2018; Seiver et al, 2013). Notably, six-year-olds’ preference for individuating information was affected by the strength of the information.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Children in the more individuating condition were given a lengthier, more informative description that was typical of those used in the classic studies with adults and recent child investigations (Gualtieri & Denison, 2018; Kahneman & Tversky, 1973; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Children in the less individuating condition were given a shorter, less informative description of the child’s preferences, which was still representative of one of the groups (see Table 1 for individuating information for each condition)…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In previous work, the individuating information has involved quite ingrained traits and stereotypes for Western children. In the present experiments, our aim was to examine this type of social learning more generally to see how weighing of different types of information influences everyday judgments that do not involve deeply rooted stereotypes (such as those based on gender, as examined in Gualtieri & Denison, 2018). To achieve this, we created two problems that contained age-appropriate group information that signified a preference for an activity, rather than a distinct social category.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Developmental change in the use of base-rates and individuating information.

Gualtieri¹

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Adults tend to make biased inferences when they are given base-rates (i.e., prior probabilities) that conflict with individuating information (i.e., a personality description), relying heavily on individuating information. Recent work has shown that six-year-olds do the same, whereas four-year-olds rely more on prior probabilities. In the present article, we revisit the argument that producing responses that align closely with base-rates should necessarily be seen as normative. We instead posit that rational inferences should be sensitive to all relevant information and should depend on its strength. In three experiments, we explored four-year-olds', six-year-olds' (N = 200), and adults' (N = 196) information use by manipulating the strength of individuating and base-rate information. Across base-rate manipulations, adults showed a bias for individuating information regardless of its strength. In contrast, six-year-olds appeared to use each type of information flexibly, depending on which was more informative. Four-year-olds' performance was less clear: Although they relied on base-rates when they were informative, they struggled to use the individuating information in their inferences and did not appreciate the manipulation of the strength of individuating information. Thus, six-year-olds appear to more flexibly use multiple sources of information than both younger children and adults, suggesting a period in development where children are able to weigh information before they are too biased toward individuating information.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Developmental change in the use of base-rates and individuating information.

Gualtieri¹

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…One possibility is that heuristic use (and its corresponding biases) develop later in childhood and strengthen as learners engage in more and more real-world judgments. A recent examination of the representativeness heuristic in 4- to 6-year-old children supports this idea (Gualtieri & Denison, 2018). In these experiments, all participants were presented with child-friendly versions of the classic lawyer-engineer problem.…”

Section: Implications For the Development Of Judgment And Decision Mamentioning

confidence: 94%

Infant Statisticians: The Origins of Reasoning Under Uncertainty

2019

Perspect Psychol Sci

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Humans frequently make inferences about uncertain future events with limited data. A growing body of work suggests that infants and other primates make surprisingly sophisticated inferences under uncertainty. First, we ask what underlying cognitive mechanisms allow young learners to make such sophisticated inferences under uncertainty. We outline three possibilities, the logic, probabilistic, and heuristics views, and assess the empirical evidence for each. We argue that the weight of the empirical work favors the probabilistic view, in which early reasoning under uncertainty is grounded in inferences about the relationship between samples and populations as opposed to being grounded in simple heuristics. Second, we discuss the apparent contradiction between this early-emerging sensitivity to probabilities with the decades of literature suggesting that adults show limited use of base-rate and sampling principles in their inductive inferences. Third, we ask how these early inductive abilities can be harnessed for improving later mathematics education and inductive inference. We make several suggestions for future empirical work that should go a long way in addressing the many remaining open questions in this growing research area.

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It is probably a pattern: does spontaneous focusing on regularities in preschool predict reasoning about randomness four years later?

et al. 2022

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The many studies with coin-tossing tasks in literature show that the concept of randomness is challenging for adults as well as children. Systematic errors observed in coin-tossing tasks are often related to the representativeness heuristic, which refers to a mental shortcut that is used to judge randomness by evaluating how well a set of random events represents the typical example for random events we hold in our mind. Representative thinking is explained by our tendency to seek for patterns in our surroundings. In the present study, predictions of coin-tosses of 302 third-graders were explored. Findings suggest that in third grade of elementary school, children make correct as well as different types of erroneous predictions and individual differences exist. Moreover, erroneous predictions that were in line with representative thinking were positively associated with an early spontaneous focus on regularities, which was assessed when they were in second year of preschool. We concluded that previous studies might have underestimated children’s reasoning about randomness in coin-tossing contexts and that representative thinking is indeed associated with pattern-based thinking tendencies.

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The development of the representativeness heuristic in young children

Cited by 19 publications

References 20 publications

Developmental change in the use of base-rates and individuating information.

Developmental change in the use of base-rates and individuating information.

Infant Statisticians: The Origins of Reasoning Under Uncertainty

It is probably a pattern: does spontaneous focusing on regularities in preschool predict reasoning about randomness four years later?

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