CHILDRENS JUDGMENTS OF CERTAINTY AND UNCERTAINTY ON A PROBLEM WHERE THE POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS DIFFER IN LIKELIHOOD

In the present study, the authors adapted a task introduced by Piaget (1987) to assess children's appreciation of indeterminacy under condit ions in which the possible solutions to a problem are not equally like ly. The task involved identifying or predicting the number of chips th at must be drawn from a box in order to determine its contents with ce rtainty. Children 7 through 12 years old were presented with this task and with Pieraut-Le Bonniec's (1980) box task (a standard measure of the ability to distinguish determinate from indeterminate conditions). The tasks produced parallel developmental functions, although there w as some indication that appreciating indeterminacy was easier on Piage t's problem than on the standard task. Information about likelihoods d id not influence children's judgments of certainty and uncertainty. In general, recognizing that a problem is determinate precedes recogniti on of indeterminacy, which, in turn, precedes success at pre dieting t he moves needed to establish certainty on a problem.