Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Prior research has documented childrens recognition that a choice made when constrained to a single option is a poorindicator of anothers preference. The present study (N = 246; 5 to 10 years) examined childrens tendency to make thisinference in stereotypical contexts (e.g., a girl playing with a doll). Because stereotypes provide powerful explanatoryframeworks (e.g., girls inherently like dolls), children may discount constraints and infer that constrained and uncon-strained stereotypical choices are both evidence of a preference. The majority of children discounted constraints in thisway. However, while younger children (5 to 6 years) tended to discount constraints similarly across both stereotypicaland gender-neutral choices, older children (9 to 10 years) were more likely to discount constraints when reasoning aboutstereotypical choices. We also report evidence that, overall, childrens acknowledgment of environmental constraints maynot be as robust as previously documented.