Verbal framing of statistical evidence drives children’s preference inferences

Abstract

Although research has shown that statistical information can support children’s inferences about specific psychological causes of others’ behavior, previous work leaves open the question of how children interpret statistical information in more ambiguous situations. The current studies investigated the effect of specific verbal framing information on children’s ability to infer mental states from statistical regularities in behavior. We found that preschool children inferred others’ preferences from their statistically non-random choices only when they were provided with verbal information placing the person’s behavior in a specifically preference-related context, not when the behavior was presented in a non-mentalistic action context or an intentional choice context. Furthermore, verbal framing information showed some evidence of supporting children’s mental state inferences even from more ambiguous statistical data. These results highlight the role that specific, relevant framing information can play in supporting children’s ability to derive novel insights from statistical information.