Title: Inference modification by children and adults
Abstract: The purpose of the five experiments was to determine if and why second graders, fourth graders, and college students differ in modifying causal inferences about a surprising event in a story. The stories contained initial episodes that invited a causal inference about the reason for an unexpected event, followed by continuation episodes containing events that confirmed, directly disconfirmed, or indirectly disconfirmed the causal inference. The inferences were probed independently after each episode, and sensitivity to the continuation events was the measure of inference modification between episodes. The experiments provided evidence about how encoding factors affecting the accessibility of the inference concept and factors affecting inference retrieval contribute to inference modification. The encoding factors included manipulations of clues about critical concepts, titles, concept repetition in the question probes, and separation of the initial inference and the continuation evidence. The retrieval factors included manipulations of quantitative and qualitative properties of the continuation events. The results generally showed small developmental increases in inference modification in situations of maximum concept accessibility and retrieval support, but large differences otherwise. Modification seemed to reflect the interaction of encoding and retrieval factors such that properties of the continuation events mattered most in situations of low concept accessibility.
Publication Year: 1991
Publication Date: 1991-10-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 5
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