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Young children's use of transitive inference in causal chains
Author(s) -
Shultz Thomas R.,
Pardo Seymour,
Altmann Esther
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1982.tb01806.x
Subject(s) - transitive relation , psychology , causal inference , impossibility , mediation , causal chain , causal model , inference , causality (physics) , causal reasoning , mediator , mechanism (biology) , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , social psychology , cognition , econometrics , epistemology , artificial intelligence , computer science , neuroscience , statistics , medicine , philosophy , physics , mathematics , combinatorics , quantum mechanics , political science , law , economics
Mediate causal transmissions are those in which the transmission between an initial cause and an eventual effect is mediated by a third event. The concept of causal mediation is seen as analogous to that involving use of a middle term in non‐causal transitive inference problems. Contrary to some previous research, both three‐ and five‐year‐olds understood mediate causal transmission as portrayed in simple, three‐term causal chains. Children of both ages chose to activate a cause which could produce an effective causal mediator over an alternative cause which could produce an ineffective causal mediator. The five‐year‐olds in addition correctly identified the impossibility of producing the effect without an appropriate causal mediator and often mentioned the causal mediator explicitly in verbal justifications of their responses. Relations between the present experiment and previous literature on causal reasoning and transitive inference are discussed.