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Almost Thinking Counterfactually: Children’s Understanding of Close Counterfactuals
Author(s) -
Beck Sarah R.,
Guthrie Carlie
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01590.x
Subject(s) - counterfactual conditional , counterfactual thinking , psychology , action (physics) , character (mathematics) , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , social psychology , mathematics , physics , geometry , quantum mechanics
Saying something “almost happened” indicates that one is considering a close counterfactual world. Previous evidence suggested that children start to consider these close counterfactuals at around 2 years of age (P. L. Harris, 1997), substantially earlier than they pass other tests of counterfactual thinking. However, this success appears to result from false positives. In Experiment 1 ( N = 41), 3‐ and 4‐year‐olds could identify a character who almost completed an action when the comparison did not complete it. However, in Experiments 1 and 2 ( N = 98), children performed poorly when the comparison character completed the action. In Experiment 3 ( N = 28), 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds consistently passed the task, indicating that they made appropriate counterfactual interpretations of the “almost” statements. This understanding of close counterfactuals proved more difficult than standard counterfactuals.