Age-trend-related differences in tasks involving conjunctive probabilistic reasoning.
Conjunctive probabilistic reasoning has been studied at different ages to ascertain whether the conjunction fallacy is due to a task demand misinterpretation. Such a misinterpretation might occur because a task that requires a comparison between a superordinate class A and a subordinate class A&B is mistakenly interpreted as requiring a comparison between the two complementary subordinate classes of A (i.e., A&B and A&notB). Children (7- and 10-year-olds) and adults were required to make conjunctive probability judgments about problems for which explicit objective probabilities were provided. The total number of A items was kept constant and the frequencies of the A&B and of the A&notB items varied across problems. When the number of A&B items was smaller than the number of A&notB items, the frequency of congruent responses increased with age. When the number of A&B items was greater or equal to that of the A&notB items, the frequency of correct answers decreased.
Chiesi
Francesca
F
Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy. f.chiesi@tin.it
Gronchi
Giorgio
G
Primi
Caterina
C
D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011340:Problem Solving