Li Rosa, Roberts Rachel C, Huettel Scott A, Brannon Elizabeth M
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA; Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2017 Jul;159:319-326. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2017.02.013. Epub 2017 Mar 27.
Ambiguity aversion arises when a decision maker prefers risky gambles with known probabilities over equivalent ambiguous gambles with unknown probabilities. This phenomenon has been consistently observed in adults across a large body of empirical work. Evaluating ambiguity aversion in young children, however, has posed methodological challenges because probabilistic representations appropriate for adults might not be understood by young children. Here, we established a novel method for representing risk and ambiguity with physical objects that overcomes previous methodological limitations and allows us to measure ambiguity aversion in young children. We found that individual 5-year-olds exhibited consistent choice preferences and, as a group, exhibited no ambiguity aversion in a task that evokes ambiguity aversion in adults. Across individuals, 5-year-olds exhibited greater variance in ambiguity preferences compared with adults tested under similar conditions. This suggests that ambiguity aversion is absent during early childhood and emerges over the course of development.
当决策者偏好具有已知概率的风险赌博而非具有未知概率的等效模糊赌博时，就会出现模糊厌恶。在大量实证研究中，这一现象在成年人中一直被观察到。然而，评估幼儿的模糊厌恶存在方法上的挑战，因为适合成年人的概率表示可能幼儿无法理解。在此，我们建立了一种用实物表示风险和模糊性的新方法，该方法克服了以往方法上的局限性，使我们能够测量幼儿的模糊厌恶。我们发现，个体5岁儿童表现出一致的选择偏好，并且作为一个群体，在一项能引发成年人模糊厌恶的任务中未表现出模糊厌恶。在个体中，与在类似条件下测试的成年人相比，5岁儿童在模糊偏好上表现出更大的差异。这表明模糊厌恶在幼儿期不存在，而是在发育过程中出现的。
