Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

People have an intuitive sense of probability beginning early in life, where they appreciate that samples should reflectpopulations in their statistical properties (e.g., Denison & Xu, 2019). We examined whether adult participants in twoexperiments (N=132; N=141, respectively) can use this intuitive sense to infer unseen properties that might be affectingthe sampling process. In both experiments, adults saw boxes with different sized balls in varying proportions. They thensaw sampling events, in which small numbers of balls were shaken from a hidden exit on the top of the box, that wereeither probable or improbable, based on box proportions. In general, adults appropriately inferred constraints on the sizeof the hidden exit by integrating information from the sizes of the balls that were sampled and the overall distribution ofballs in the box. Ongoing work examines whether toddlers can make similar inferences.