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The effect of causal chain length on counterfactual conditional reasoning
Author(s) -
Beck Sarah R.,
Riggs Kevin J.,
Gorniak Sarah L.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
british journal of developmental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.062
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 2044-835X
pISSN - 0261-510X
DOI - 10.1348/026151009x450836
Subject(s) - counterfactual thinking , causal chain , german , psychology , causal reasoning , counterfactual conditional , developmental psychology , causal model , replicate , cognitive psychology , cognition , social psychology , statistics , linguistics , mathematics , philosophy , neuroscience
We investigated German and Nichols' finding that 3‐year‐olds could answer counterfactual conditional questions about short causal chains of events, but not long. In four experiments ( N =192), we compared 3‐ and 4‐year‐olds' performance on short and long causal chain questions, manipulating whether the child could draw on general knowledge to answer. We failed to replicate German and Nichols' result, finding instead that in two experiments (Experiments 1 and 3) there was no difference in performance on short and long causal chain questions and in two experiments (Experiments 2 and 4) children showed the opposite pattern: short causal chain questions were more difficult than long. These two unexpected patterns of results were replicated in a fifth study ( N =97). Children with lower language ability found short causal chains more difficult than long. Performance by children with higher language ability was unaffected by the length of the causal chain they had to consider. We found no evidence that children showed precocious counterfactual thinking when asked about recent events in a causal chain and conclude that counterfactual thinking develops after 4 years of age.