Recency effects in primary-age children and college students

Abstract

We investigate the evolution of probabilistic reasoning with age and some related biases, such as the negative/positive recency effects. Primary school children and college students were presented with probability tasks in which they were asked to estimate the likelihood of the next occurring event after a sequence of independent outcomes. Results indicate that older children perform better than younger children and college students. Concerning biases, the positive recency effect decreases with age whereas no age-related differences are found for the negative recency effect. Theoretical and educational implications of results are discussed. © 2009 by GOKKUSAGI.