Poster #58 - Why did that happen? Children’s causal explanations of mechanical support events?

• In Event: Poster Session 06

Abstract

Although children acquire spatial language for basic spatial relations (e.g., cup ON table) by age two, relatively little is known regarding how children learn to talk about mechanical support (e.g., objects attached via tape, glue, etc.). Older children and adult English speakers use lexical verbs to encode mechanical support (e.g., “tape”, “glue”), however younger children mostly use the basic locative construction (e.g., ‘the poster IS ON the wall’) instead of lexical verbs (e.g., …‘TAPED to the wall’) until at least age four (Johannes et al., 2016). How do children acquire mechanical support language? Given that explanations 1) often refer to unobserved functional properties and causal relations and 2) play a role in how children integrate new information with prior knowledge (Legare et al., 2010), the current study asks the broad question of whether explanations play a role in how children acquire mechanical support language. Specifically, we investigate 3- to 5-year-old children’s explanations for mechanical support via adhesion.

The procedure was modeled after Legare (2010). Participants (N=26) were first shown, during separate training trials, two objects that contrasted in their mechanical properties: one adhered to a ground object and one failed to adhere (note: the adhesive mechanism was not visible) (Figure 1). During a confirmation trial, these properties were displayed simultaneously in a side-by-side presentation. During test, children were shown two trials where the objects displayed properties consistent or inconsistent with their prior knowledge (e.g., the adhered object fell, while the non-adhered object stuck). Children were asked “why did that happen?” and repeated this procedure two times with novel objects. Across trials we assessed whether children provided causal explanations for the events and the types of causal explanations they provided.

Explanations were binary-coded (1: provided causal explanation; 0: did not provide causal explanation). A binary logistic regression revealed a significant main effect of age (β =1.01, 95% CI = 1–1.0210, p = .005): by four years old children provided causal explanations for adhesive support events (Figure 2). We also analyzed the types of causal explanations provided: causal function (referring to internal properties; e.g., sticky), category switch (referring to physical switching of the objects; e.g., switching adhesive object for nonadhesive object), and other. Three-year-olds overwhelmingly used causal function explanations (79%), while four- and five-year-olds usage of causal function explanations decreased (52% and 47%, respectively). Older children used category switch explanations as well (39% and 41%, for four- and five-year-olds, respectively). Thus, as age increased, children provided more category switch and fewer causal function explanations.

The current data suggest that children may not spontaneously encode the causal aspects of mechanical support events into their language until 4 years of age. They also suggest that when children do provide causal explanations for adhesive support events, they are inclined to represent objects by the causal-functional properties that enable mechanical support, and not simply by their physical appearances. Thus, results support the hypothesis that causal explanations may modulate the learning process in mechanical support events.

Authors

• Karima Elgamal, Montclair State University
  Presenting Author

• Paul Muentener, Tufts University

• Laura Lakusta, Montclair State University