Weak Evidence but strong priors? Why Children Struggle with Belief Revision in Gradually Changing Environments

Weak Evidence but strong priors? Why Children Struggle with Belief Revision in Gradually Changing Environments | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Weak Evidence but strong priors? Why Children Struggle with Belief Revision in Gradually Changing Environments Elisabeth Stöttinger, Beate Priewasser, Eva Rafetseder This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7757356/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted 9 You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Rafetseder et al. (2021) were the first to demonstrate that children have difficulty revising their beliefs when objects morphed from one object (e.g. a rabbit) into another (e.g. a duck). Children aged four to eight reported the second object significantly later than adults. This is surprising, because both children and adults held the same prior belief (“it is a rabbit”) and were exposed to the same contradictory evidence. We conducted three experiments to examine children’s delayed belief revision. In Experiment 1 (N = 58; 3–6-year-olds), we demonstrated that children only struggle to identify the second object in the gradual condition, while displaying adult-like categorical perception when the same images were presented individually outside of the morphing context. In Experiment 2 (N = 86; aged 6–11), we found that only children aged nine years and over showed a similar pattern to adults, and that a global processing style facilitated identification of the second object. In Experiment 3 (N = 47, 5–6-year-olds), when children were explicitly informed of the two possible interpretations of the morphed images, their performance increased, although not to the level observed in the individual condition of Experiment 1. These findings suggest that children of different ages struggle with the morphing task for different reasons. While older children may use less efficient, potentially local, exploration strategies, younger children may not explore at all due to their overconfidence in their initial priors. Bayesian principles belief revision local vs. global processing visual imagery Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Supplementary Files SupplementalMaterialsBeliefRevision.docx Cite Share Download PDF Status: Under Review Version 1 posted Editorial decision: Revision requested 04 Dec, 2025 Reviews received at journal 02 Dec, 2025 Reviews received at journal 11 Nov, 2025 Reviewers agreed at journal 02 Nov, 2025 Reviewers agreed at journal 13 Oct, 2025 Reviewers invited by journal 08 Oct, 2025 Editor assigned by journal 08 Oct, 2025 Submission checks completed at journal 03 Oct, 2025 First submitted to journal 01 Oct, 2025 You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. 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