Children’s reasoning about possible outcomes of events in the present and the future.

2025/07/21 by Esra Nur Turan-Küçük, Melissa M. Kibbe · 5 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Cognitive psychology #Developmental psychology #Education and Critical Thinking Development #Psychology

paper · open access · doi:10.1037/dev0002028

published in Developmental Psychology 62(3), 572-582 (American Psychological Association)

openalex publication_date 2025/07/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

= 96), children were asked to reason about the possible identity of an object in an event. In both experiments, we replicated previous patterns of success with future possibility reasoning, and found no differences in children's ability to reason about possible outcomes in the present versus the future. Our results suggest that the ability to navigate uncertainty across different time points may emerge together in early development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

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• Understanding possibility through action: Young children’s modal reasoning in agentive contexts
• Children’s Representations of Possibility: Uncertainty About “What” Is Easier Than Uncertainty About “Where”

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