The Effects of Simple Necessity and Sufficiency Relationships on Children's Causal Inferences

Abstract

SIEGLER, ROBERT S. The Effects of Simple Necessity and Sufficiency Relationships on Children's Causal Inferences. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1976, 47, 1058-1063. 5and 8-year-olds were presented a causal inference task under varying conditions of necessity and sufficiency. It was found that both variables affected the causal statements of both age groups, but in different ways. For 5-year-olds, either necessity alone, sufficiency alone, or both were grounds for inferring causation; on the other hand, both necessity and sufficiency relationships needed to be present before 8-year-olds would draw such an inference. While there were differences in the ability of the 2 age groups to extract information from the physical display, these did not appear to account for the developmental differences in inferential patterns. Instead, these developmental differences, and similar previous findings, seemed to be due to young children relying more heavily on temporal contiguity in drawing causal inferences.