Katharina Buczek
Study 2
During this study, the toddlers were taught that they could throw away one box in order to receive the contents of the two remaining boxes. So, children who deploy possibility concepts, or minimal possibility representations, should hypothetically throw away one of the paired containers most of the time.
The researchers also noted that if the children were truly choosing at random, then the results should have been similar to the first task.
However, they were not. In fact, the children actually threw away one of the paired containers– which ruled out the hypothesis that the toddlers were using a low-level strategy.
Study 3
This final study, which included 24 toddlers who were 3 years old, included eight different trials.
In each trial, the children were instructed to throw one box away; then, they could choose between one of the two remaining containers.
Similar to the second study, the toddlers threw away one of the paired containers more often than expected.
Then, the wise decision would have been to select the single container– since the remaining paired box might or might not have contents inside.
However, the children only selected the single container 50% of the time. So, this evidence indicates that the toddlers were deploying minimal possibility representations instead of more robust possibility concepts– such as “might” and “might not.”
Now, the researchers suggest that children might have possibility concepts; however, performance issues present during the tasks might be preventing children from using them.
