Estimates and estimate-based inferences in young children

Abstract

The ability of children to perform in estimation-based inference tasks was studied in two experiments. In the first study, children in the CA range 5-7 years were tested for their ability to make increasingly accurate estimates of proportions as a function of CA. A simple visual judgment task which did not involve either verbal stimuli or responses was judgment task was found that there was above-chance level performance at all CA levels and that performance improved as a function of CA. In the second study, measures of the ability to make quantitative inferences were also studied in children in the CA range 6-8 years. It was hypothesized that: (1) performance would be above-chance level at all ages; (2) inferential performance would improve with increasing CA; (3) conservatism, defined here as the constriction of responses to the middle of the response scale, would vary inversely with performance level; and (4) attention strategies would be a significant determiner of performance. All of the hypotheses except (2) were supported. The results were discussed in terms of cognitive models which consider inference strategies and the role of language in the development of these strategies. The studies provide evidence that accurate but nonlogical modes of inference operate in the performance of children within the CA range tested.