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- Title
Young Children Are Wishful Thinkers: The Development of Wishful Thinking in 3- to 10-Year-Old Children.
- Authors
Wente, Adrienne O.; Goddu, Mariel K.; Garcia, Teresa; Posner, Elyanah; Fernández Flecha, María; Gopnik, Alison
- Abstract
Previously, research on wishful thinking has found that desires bias older children's and adults' predictions during probabilistic reasoning tasks. In this article, we explore wishful thinking in children aged 3- to 10-years-old. Do young children learn to be wishful thinkers? Or do they begin with a wishful thinking bias that is gradually overturned during development? Across five experiments, we compare low- and middle-income United States and Peruvian 3- to 10-year-old children (N = 682). Children were asked to make predictions during games of chance. Across experiments, preschool-aged children from all backgrounds consistently displayed a strong wishful thinking bias. However, the bias declined with age.
- Subjects
REASONING in children; POOR children; MIDDLE class; GAMES of chance; PERUVIANS; AMERICAN children; THOUGHT &; thinking; RESEARCH; PROBLEM solving; CHILD development; RESEARCH methodology; MEDICAL cooperation; EVALUATION research; COMPARATIVE studies
- Publication
Child Development, 2020, Vol 91, Issue 4, p1166
- ISSN
0009-3920
- Publication type
journal article
- DOI
10.1111/cdev.13299