Young children do not distinguish between physical and epistemic uncertainty

When confronted with alternative possibilities, we experience different kinds of uncertainty: with physical uncertainty the outcome has yet to happen, while with epistemic uncertainty the outcome has happened, but is unknown. Previous work suggests an asymmetry in acquisition: children prepare for physically uncertainty prior to epistemic uncertainty (Robinson et al., 2006). The present studies tested the robustness of this developmental asymmetry with minimal contrast pairs of uncertainty conditions. Across two studies (N = 204, 3- to 6-year-old German-speaking children), we found no differences between the conditions: Children did not prepare differently for multiple incompatible outcomes of physically and epistemically uncertain events. Our findings stand in tension with previous findings and recent theoretical work on the development of modal cognition.