The development of probabilistic inference in infants

婴儿概率推理的发展

• 批准号: 436151-2013
• 负责人: Denison, Stephanie
• 金额: $ 2.11万
• 依托单位: University of Waterloo
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2013-01-01 至 2014-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=533448
• 关键词: development; probabilistic; inference; infants

Despite decades of research highlighting the difficulties that adults face when making probability computations, a great deal of recent research has revealed that infants as young as 6 months can engage in rudimentary probabilistic reasoning. That is, evidence from infants' active search and looking behaviours suggests that they can make generalizations from samples to populations, inferring that a sample of, say, 4 white and 1 red balls is more likely to have been randomly drawn from a box of mostly white balls than a box of mostly red balls. Probabilistic inferences such as these represent a powerful learning ability: Reasoning by extending specific instances (e.g., the composition of a few balls in a sample) to more general cases (e.g., an entire population), provides an efficient engine for rapid learning.

尽管几十年来的研究强调了成年人在进行概率计算时面临的困难，但最近的大量研究表明，6个月大的婴儿就能进行基本的概率推理。也就是说，婴儿积极搜索和观察行为的证据表明，他们可以从样本到总体进行概括，推断出一个样本，比如4个白球和1个红球，更有可能是从一个以白球为主的盒子里随机抽取的，而不是从一个以红球为主的盒子里随机抽取的。诸如此类的概率推断代表了强大的学习能力：通过将特定实例（例如，样本中几个球的组成）扩展到更一般的情况（例如，整个群体）来进行推理，为快速学习提供了有效的引擎。