Premium
Reasoning about complex probabilistic concepts in childhood
Author(s) -
FISK JOHN E.,
BURY ANGELA S.,
HOLDEN RACHEL
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.2006.00558.x
Subject(s) - representativeness heuristic , conjunction (astronomy) , event (particle physics) , psychology , probabilistic logic , fallacy , categorization , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , social psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science , epistemology , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , astronomy
The competencies of children, particularly their understanding of the more complex probabilistic concepts, have not been thoroughly investigated. In the present study participants were required to choose the more likely of two events, a single event, and a joint event (conjunctive or disjunctive). It was predicted that the operation of the representativeness heuristic would result in erroneous judgements when children compared an unlikely component event with a likely‐unlikely conjunction (the conjunction fallacy) and when a likely component event was compared to a likely‐unlikely disjunction. The results supported the first prediction with both older children aged between 9 and 10 years and younger children aged between 4 and 5 committing the conjunction fallacy. However, the second prediction was not confirmed. It is proposed that the basis of representativeness judgements may differ between the conjunctive and disjunctive cases with absolute frequency information possibly playing a differential role.