Preschoolers' Understanding of Graded Preferences

To navigate the social world, children must learn about others' preferences. Though people can use emotional and verbal cues to express their preferences, these cues are often unavailable or unreliable. Previous research has found that preschoolers and toddlers use statistical information to infer the existence of a preference. However, in the real world, preferences are not binary; they can also be graded. In two experiments, we find that preschoolers use statistical information about an agent's choices to infer the graded strengths of preferences. From observing an agent's choices, preschoolers inferred that objects the agent chose less consistently were less preferred than objects the agent chose more consistently. Additionally, children's responses suggest preschoolers make sophisticated transitive inferences from their observations.