The Impossibility and Improbability Judgment of Children

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Literature Review
Discussion
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Andrew Shtulman and Susan Carey (2007) studied the perception of impossibility and improbability judgment of children between the age group of 4 and 8 years. The study is conducted in the form of an experiment wherein children and adults were shown various extraordinary events. All of them were asked if they felt that such event was possible in “real life”. The study showed a difference in the judgment of children and adults, events that the adults felt were improbable but not impossible whereas the children dubbed them to be impossible. The research article reviewed aims to investigate how “development of possibility-judgment strategies between the ages of 4 and 8” (Shtulman & Carey, 2007, p. 1015).

Literature Review

The literature review done by Shtulman and Carey (2007) show that children develop the ability to identify impossible events at an early age. The authors have reviewed various studies, which showed that children develop the ability to distinguish between possible and impossible events at an early age. They also show that research has shown that children distinguished between possible and impossible events that violated the physical principles. The literature review concluded that children could distinguish a probable from and impossible events, but found it difficult to relate it to the undefined space of “real world”. Thus, Shtulman and Carey conclude that “children understand modal concepts, in general, has come from studies involving small, well-defined domains in which all possibilities can be individuated and enumerated” (2007, p. 1016).

The study Shtulman and Carey (2007) followed is that by Piaget (1987) who claimed that children “initially confuse necessity with actuality and must learn to differentiate true necessity from ‘‘pseudo-necessity,’’ or the impression of necessity based on a superficial analysis” (Shtulman & Carey, 2007, p. 1017). Shtulman and Care (2007) use this idea presented by Piaget and try to find the similarity or dissimilarity between children’s logical and physical reasoning.

Discussion

The first experiment was story book-based experiment of children’s reasoning for physical possibility. A storybook full of extraordinary events was made of 1500 words. The participants for the experiment were 16 children of 4, 5, and 6 years respectively and 16 adults. The children were read the whole storybook at the beginning of the experiment, and were then asked if they had experienced such events. If the children answered negatively, the participants had to state if they believed such events could occur in reality and provide a justification for denying the occurrence of the event in real life. 671 justifications for impossible events, provided by the participants were divided into two categories: informative and redundant justification. Then the informative justifications, further categorized, as factual and hypothetical justification. The study also showed that all the participants considered the occurrence of ordinary events possible, and mostly the participants denied the occurrence of impossible events, irrespective of the age group. However, the average number of events judged possible in case of improbable events was higher for older participants. The experiment showed that children were incapable of differentiating between improbable from impossible events, and in their justification of the events.
This experiment aimed at assessing the children’s ability to make a “frequency based modal inference” (Shtulman & Carey, 2007, p. 1024). 12 4-year-old children were given three tasks – marble, mouse and storybook task. The result of the experiment showed that children accurately performed in the first two tasks. In total, the children affirmed 92% of the probable events, 92% of improbable events, and 21% of impossible events. Experiment 2 also confirms the finding of experiment 1 that children are incapable of differentiating between improbable from impossible events.
In this experiment the 12 4-year-old children were administered the storybook task in the same manner as experiment 1 and 2. In this case, they were asked one additional question, i.e. for the events the children denied having experienced, if they were possible by magic. The results showed that the children through that “7.7 of the eight ordinary events could occur without magic, 2.6 of the eight improbable events could occur without magic, and 0.5 of the eight impossible events could occur without magic” (Shtulman & Carey, 2007, p. 1026). The ANOVA results confirmed that the the children’s ability to distinguish between improbable and impossible events were not bettered even by using the magic judgment.
In this experiment, the improbable events in the story were paired with the impossible events in the story and a unique set of 64 events were created. The children were asked to take the pairs of possible and impossible events, according to them, and set them apart in two containers. This study also brought the researcher to the same conclusion as was found in experiment 1-3.

Conclusion

The study showed that children deny the possibility of events that are inconsistent with social and physical laws. The study shows why most 4-year old children endorse the existence of magic. Further the study shows why children endorse the existence of fantasy characters.

However, studies have been conducted by Woolley and Van Reet (Woolley & Van Reet, 2006) and Sharon and Woolley (2004) showed that children have a higher degree of appreciation for the boundary between reality and fantasy than has been shown through the research conducted by Shtulman & Carey (2007).

References

Piaget, J. (1987). Possibility and necessity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Sharon, T., & Woolley, J. (2004). Do monsters dream? Young children’s understanding of the fantasy/reality distinction. British Journal of Developmental Psychology Vol. 22 No. 2 , 293-310.

Shtulman, A., & Carey, S. (2007). Improbable or Impossible? How Children Reason About the Possibility of Extraordinary Events. Child Development Vol.78, No. 3 , 1015 – 1032.

Woolley, J., & Van Reet, J. (2006). Effects of context on judgments concerning the reality status of novel entities. Child Development vol. 77 no. 6 , 1778-93.

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