The Acquisition of Modal Concepts Brian P. Leahy & Susan E. Carey
It was very interesting to read about the different experiments conducted in this area and I really enjoyed reading them.
I found the idea that many different non-human animals have the capacity for modal representations of possibility through the disjunctive syllogism very interesting. But I have some questions about why infants and non-human animals would need modal representations of possibility. What are the evolutionary advantages of this capacity for non-human animals? I ask this not to criticize the idea, but because I’m genuinely curious about it.
The results from Call’s Cups task also seem open to various confounds and alternative explanations. Also, I think this study is most compatible with minimal representations of possibility account. However, despite my curiosity about its evolutionary advantages, I find it difficult to accept the minimal representations of possibility account, and I find the alternative explanations for studies like the Y-tube task more plausible.
Also, if we accept the proposal that nonlinguistic animals and humans through the early preschool years have the capacity for minimal representations of possibility alone, I think this creates many more follow-up questions.
I also do not understand how this account is compatible with the Bayesian framework.
Young children distinguish the impossible from the merely improbable, Aimee E. Stahla, and Lisa Feigensonb
I did not understand the reasoning behind the relationship between learning which object is the “Blick” and the question of whether children distinguish between the impossible and the merely improbable.