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Poster #27 - Children’s Causal and Counterfactual Attributions About the Same Events

Sat, March 23, 12:45 to 2:00pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Decades of research have identified robust patterns in the types of counterfactual thoughts adults generate when given open-ended “if only…” prompts. Adults mutate exceptional over routine events (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982), controllable over uncontrollable ones (Girotto, Legrenzi, & Rizzo, 1991), permissible over inappropriate actions (McCloy & Byrne, 2000), and enabling conditions over strong causes (Mandel & Lehman, 1996). These “fault lines” of reality show reliable inter-individual consistency (Byrne, 2005). A question for developmental research is whether these patterns are fundamental features of the human reasoning system. Do children show similar patterns in their earliest counterfactual thoughts, or are these biases acquired over time?

In the present study, we focused on a commonly-studied aspect of adult counterfactual thought: the relation between causal and counterfactual judgments, and the tendency for these judgments to invoke strong causes versus enabling conditions, respectively. We included a wide age range (3 ½ to 8 years, N=160) to investigate the types of counterfactuals children generate when given open-ended counterfactual questions. For the purpose of recruitment and analysis, we divided children into three age groups: preschoolers (n = 53, range = 3.39 to 4.99y), kindergartens (n = 56, range = 5.08 to 6.98y), and school-age (n = 51, range = 7.01 to 8.96y).

Study stimuli included 4 stories featuring a character involved in a minor mishap. In all stories, the character was doing an activity (e.g., drawing pictures) and an action or lack of action on the part of the character (e.g., leaving the drawings outside) enabled the mishap to occur (e.g., the drawings blow away). In all cases, the outcome was caused by a force of nature. At the end of each story, the experimenter asked the child 3 questions: a causal question, a control question, and a counterfactual question (order counterbalanced). The causal question asked the child to explain why the outcome had occurred (e.g., “Why are Andy’s drawings gone?”) and the counterfactual question asked the child how the outcome could have been prevented (e.g., “What should have happened so Andy’s drawings would not be gone?”). Children’s responses were coded for whether they referred to (1) the force of nature, (2) the character’s action, (3) both the force of nature and the character’s action, or (4) other.

Across all ages, and in line with research with adults, children’s modal response was to reference the force of nature when making causal attributions and the character’s action when making counterfactual attributions. Comparing across ages, we found marked developmental differences in counterfactual attributions. Preschoolers were significantly more likely to mention the force of nature in their counterfactuals (e.g., “The wind shouldn’t have blown”) than older children, p < .001. Conversely, they were significantly less likely than older children to reference the character’s action (e.g., “He should have brought the paper inside.”),p < .001.

These findings suggest that children’s spontaneous counterfactuals are remarkably adult-like from a young age, and point to possible developmental differences in the types of events children invoke in their counterfactuals.

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