U. of Washington A toddler tries the probability test.
University of Washington - Most people know children learn many skills simply by watching people around them. Without explicit instructions youngsters know to do things like press a button to operate the television and twist a knob to open a door. Now researchers have taken this further, finding that children as young as age 2 intuitively use mathematical concepts such as probability to help make sense of the world around them. In a study led by researchers at the University of Washington, toddlers could tell the difference between two different ways an experimenter played a game, with one strategy being more successful than the other. When it was their turn to play, the children could use the more successful strategy that they observed to increase their odds of winning. The study will be published in an upcoming issue of Developmental Science. "In the real world, there are multitudes of possible ways to solve a problem, but how do we learn how to find the best solution?” said lead author Anna Waismeyer , a post-doctoral researcher at UW's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences.
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