Toddlers understand concept of possibility

Quite possibly, toddlers are much smarter than we think! 😊

"... The findings, the first to demonstrate that young children distinguish between improbable and impossible events, and learn significantly better after impossible occurrences, are newly published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ...

Improbable events might be surprising, but they don't necessarily need any explanation. Impossible events require kids to reevaluate what they thought they knew. ..."

From the abstract:

"From infancy, children show heightened interest in events that are impossible or improbable, relative to likely events. Do young children represent impossible and improbable events as points on a continuum of possibility, or do they instead treat them as categorically distinct? Here, we compared 2- and 3-y-old children’s learning (N = 335) following nearly identical events that were equi-probable, improbable, or impossible. We found that children learned significantly better following impossible than possible events, no matter how unlikely. We conclude that young children distinguish between the impossible and the merely improbable."

Toddlers understand concept of possibility | Hub "Children too young to know words like "impossible" and "improbable" nonetheless understand how possibility works, finds new work with 2- and 3-year-olds"

Young children distinguish the impossible from the merely improbable (open access)

Percent of children correctly identifying the Type B object when asked for the blick in the Equi-Probable, Improbable, and Impossible conditions. X-axis indicates probability of drawing a Type B object across conditions.