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: 2014
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2014-01-01 至 2015-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=553005
• 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，年仅6个月的婴儿可以进行基本的概率推理。也就是说，来自婴儿主动寻找和观看行为的证据表明，他们可以从样本到群体进行概括，从而推断，比如说，4个白色和1个红色球的样本更有可能是从一个主要是白色的球的盒子里随机抽取的，而不是从一个主要是红色的球的盒子里随机抽取的。这样的概率推理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)进行推理，为快速学习提供了有效的引擎。