Statistical inference and sensitivity to sampling in 11-month-old infants |
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Authors: | Fei Xu Stephanie Denison |
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Institution: | Department of Psychology, 2136 West Mall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6K 1Z4 |
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Abstract: | Research on initial conceptual knowledge and research on early statistical learning mechanisms have been, for the most part, two separate enterprises. We report a study with 11-month-old infants investigating whether they are sensitive to sampling conditions and whether they can integrate intentional information in a statistical inference task. Previous studies found that infants were able to make inferences from samples to populations, and vice versa Xu, F., & Garcia, V. (2008). Intuitive statistics by 8-month-old infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105, 5012-5015]. We found that when employing this statistical inference mechanism, infants are sensitive to whether a sample was randomly drawn from a population or not, and they take into account intentional information (e.g., explicitly expressed preference, visual access) when computing the relationship between samples and populations. Our results suggest that domain-specific knowledge is integrated with statistical inference mechanisms early in development. |
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Keywords: | Statistical inference Infant learning Random sampling |
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