Children's causal attributions to states and events described by different classes of verbs

Abstract

The causal structure of schemas for the actions and states encoded by different classes of English verbs was examined in the elicited narratives of 19 three- and four-year-old children. Verbs within a class elicited similar narratives, whereas across classes the event descriptions varied in the animacy of the event participants and in the causal connections between them. Children produced animacy patterns and causal attributions similar to patterns produced by adults in previous research. Results are consistent with the view that schemas for common English verbs for actions and states contain information about who or what is likely to do or feel the action or state, who or what is likely to be the recipient of the action or to elicit the state, and the causal connections between the schema participants. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the relations between social-cognition and language.