Early Developments in Children's Causal Judgments

Abstract

SOPHIAN, CATHERINE, and HUBER, ALICE. Early Developments in Children's Causal Judgments. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1984, 55, 512-526. Early developmental changes in children's understanding of causality were examined in 2 studies of 3and 5-year-olds' causal judgments. In both studies, children were asked to judge which of 2 stimuli caused an observed event across a series of problems that provided a variety of alternative cues. The first study examined children's selections from a large number of conflicting cues, using problems based on the movements of a toy train. Nearly all children showed consistent use of 1 or 2 cues, but only 5-year-olds' judgments were in accord with the principle of priority, according to which causes must precede their effects in time. The second study focused on children's responses to conflicts between temporal priority and specific trained knowledge, using 2 different domains of causal judgment problems. Here, both age groups showed some use of temporal priority, but the 5-year-olds showed a better appreciation of its necessary force. These findings were taken to support a hypothesized developmental shift in children's causal reasoning as it pertains to the identification of causes. Early causal reasoning appears to be primarily empirical and based on concrete features of the events in question, whereas later reasoning may be more logical and involve greater reliance on abstract causal principles that enable children to interpret even unfamiliar events.