The Predictive Utility of Past Success: Skill and Chance in Children's Theory of Performance

Success at a skill-based activity shows that a person is competent and likely to succeed again in the future. Success at a pure-chance activity, by contrast, does not imply competence or future success. In two experiments, we investigated children's developing understanding of how skill- and chance-based activities differ in relation to competence. In both experiments, children aged 4-7 (total N = 279) saw skill- and chance-based activities and judged whether a person who had previously succeeded with each activity would succeed when next attempting it. From Age 5, children were more likely to see past success as predictive of future success for skill- than chance-based activities. The second experiment also looked at judgments about agents who had previously failed and found that children at all ages predicted future success similarly regardless of whether activities involved skill or chance alone. This experiment also included a sample of adults (N = 202), and found their responses were overall comparable to those of 7-year-olds. Together, these finding are informative about development in children's reasoning about the predictive utility of past success, and potentially about their theory of performance-their understanding of factors that determine whether agents are likely to succeed. The findings provide preliminary evidence for development in this theory at Age 5 while also showing that its development is protracted. SUMMARY: We examined how 4-7-year-olds distinguish between chance- and skill-based activities. From Age 5, children saw past success as more predictive of future success for skill-based activities. Children at all ages saw past failure as similarly predictive for both types of activities. Our findings suggest change in children's theory of performance at Age 5, while also revealing further improvements to Age 7.