Three-year-olds' ability to plan for mutually exclusive future possibilities is limited primarily by their representations of possible plans, not possible events

Abstract

The ability to prepare for mutually exclusive possible events in the future is essential for everyday decision making. Previous studies have suggested that this ability develops between the ages of 3 and 5 years, and in young children is primarily limited by the ability to represent the set of possible outcomes of an event as “possible”. We tested an alternative hypothesis that this ability may be limited by the ability to represent the set of possible actions that could be taken to prepare for those possible outcomes. We adapted the inverted y-shaped tube task of Redshaw and Suddendorf (2016), in which children are asked to catch a marble that is dropped into the top of the tube and can emerge from either the left or right branch of the tube. While 4-year-olds typically place their hands under both openings to catch the marble, preparing for both possible outcomes (optimal action), 3-year-olds often cover only one opening, preparing for only one possible outcome (suboptimal action). In three Experiments, we asked whether first showing children the set of possible actions that could be taken on the tube would enable them to recognize the optimal action that should be used to catch the marble (Experiments 1 and 3, total n = 99 US 3- and 4-year-olds) and enable them to use the optimal action themselves (Experiment 2, n = 96 US 3- and 4-year-olds). We found that 3- and 4-year-olds performed similarly when they were given the opportunity to observe the set of possible actions beforehand. These findings suggest that 3-year-olds' competence at representing mutually exclusive possibilities may be masked by their developing ability to represent and deploy plans to act on these possibilities.