ABSTRACT
KEY WORDS Certainty · Classification · Equivalence classes · Indeterminacy · Inference · Necessity · Possibility · Reasoning · Uncertainty
ABSTRACT
The present chapter offers a review and analysis of studies of children’s understanding of certainty and uncertainty. It proceeds first by proposing requisite skills needed for insight into uncertainty. Additional skills needed for specific inferences are then considered. It is argued that discrepancies in the literature regarding the apparent age of onset of the ability to discriminate certain from uncertain inferences are partly due to the fact that different inferential skills are tapped by different tasks. The acquisition of a key skill, the withholding of judgment in insufficient-information contexts, is argued to derive from children’s ability to form equivalence classes.
