Fisk John E, Slattery Rachel
School of Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom.
Can J Exp Psychol. 2005 Sep;59(3):168-78. doi: 10.1037/h0087472.
While adults are known to exhibit biases when making conjunctive probability judgments, little is known about childhood competencies in this area. Participants (aged between four and five years, eight and ten years, and a group of young adults) attempted to select the more likely of two events, a single event, and a conjunctive event containing, as one of its components, the single event. The problems were such that the objective probabilities of the component events were potentially available. Children in both age groups were generally successful when the single event was likely. However, when it was unlikely, a majority of children rejected it, choosing the conjunctive event instead, thereby committing the conjunction fallacy. A substantial minority of adults also committed the fallacy under equivalent conditions. It is concluded that under certain conditions children are capable of normative conjunctive judgments but that the mechanisms underpinning this capacity remain to be fully understood.
虽然已知成年人在进行合取概率判断时会表现出偏差，但对于儿童在这方面的能力却知之甚少。参与者（年龄在4至5岁、8至10岁以及一组年轻成年人）试图从两个事件中选择可能性更大的事件，一个是单一事件，另一个是合取事件，其中合取事件包含该单一事件作为其组成部分之一。这些问题的情况是，组成事件的客观概率是有可能得知的。当单一事件很可能发生时，两个年龄组的儿童通常都能做出正确选择。然而，当单一事件不太可能发生时，大多数儿童会拒绝它，转而选择合取事件，从而犯了合取谬误。在同等条件下，也有相当一部分成年人犯了这种谬误。研究得出结论，在某些条件下，儿童能够做出规范的合取判断，但支撑这种能力的机制仍有待充分理解。
