Toddlers infer unobserved causes for spontaneous events
Previous research suggests that children infer the presence of unobserved causes when objects appear to move spontaneously. Are such inferences limited to motion events or do children assume that unexplained physical events have causes more generally? Here we introduce an apparently spontaneous even...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Frontiers Research Foundation
2015
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/94336 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2981-8039 |
| _version_ | 1826199908890181632 |
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| author | Muentener, Paul Jason Schulz, Laura E. |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Muentener, Paul Jason Schulz, Laura E. |
| author_sort | Muentener, Paul Jason |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Previous research suggests that children infer the presence of unobserved causes when objects appear to move spontaneously. Are such inferences limited to motion events or do children assume that unexplained physical events have causes more generally? Here we introduce an apparently spontaneous event and ask whether, even in the absence of spatiotemporal and co-variation cues linking the events, toddlers treat a plausible variable as a cause of the event. Toddlers (24 months) saw a toy that appeared to light up either spontaneously or after an experimenter’s action. Toddlers were also introduced to a button but were not shown any predictive relation between the button and the light. Across three different dependent measures of exploration, predictive looking (Study 1), prompted intervention (Study 2), and spontaneous exploration (Study 3), toddlers were more likely to represent the button as a cause of the light when the event appeared to occur spontaneously. In Study 4, we found that even in the absence of a plausible candidate cause, toddlers engaged in selective exploration when the light appeared to activate spontaneously. These results suggest that toddlers’ exploration is guided by the causal explanatory power of events. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:27:44Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/94336 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:27:44Z |
| publishDate | 2015 |
| publisher | Frontiers Research Foundation |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/943362022-10-01T03:47:17Z Toddlers infer unobserved causes for spontaneous events Muentener, Paul Jason Schulz, Laura E. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Schulz, Laura E. Previous research suggests that children infer the presence of unobserved causes when objects appear to move spontaneously. Are such inferences limited to motion events or do children assume that unexplained physical events have causes more generally? Here we introduce an apparently spontaneous event and ask whether, even in the absence of spatiotemporal and co-variation cues linking the events, toddlers treat a plausible variable as a cause of the event. Toddlers (24 months) saw a toy that appeared to light up either spontaneously or after an experimenter’s action. Toddlers were also introduced to a button but were not shown any predictive relation between the button and the light. Across three different dependent measures of exploration, predictive looking (Study 1), prompted intervention (Study 2), and spontaneous exploration (Study 3), toddlers were more likely to represent the button as a cause of the light when the event appeared to occur spontaneously. In Study 4, we found that even in the absence of a plausible candidate cause, toddlers engaged in selective exploration when the light appeared to activate spontaneously. These results suggest that toddlers’ exploration is guided by the causal explanatory power of events. National Science Foundation (U.S.). Faculty Early Career Development Program Templeton Foundation James S. McDonnell Foundation (Collaborative Interdisciplinary Grant on Causal Reasoning) 2015-02-11T19:10:13Z 2015-02-11T19:10:13Z 2014-12 2014-06 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 1664-1078 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/94336 Muentener, Paul, and Laura Schulz. “Toddlers Infer Unobserved Causes for Spontaneous Events.” Front. Psychol. 5 (December 23, 2014). https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2981-8039 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01496 Frontiers in Psychology Creative Commons Attribution http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf Frontiers Research Foundation Frontiers Research Foundation |
| spellingShingle | Muentener, Paul Jason Schulz, Laura E. Toddlers infer unobserved causes for spontaneous events |
| title | Toddlers infer unobserved causes for spontaneous events |
| title_full | Toddlers infer unobserved causes for spontaneous events |
| title_fullStr | Toddlers infer unobserved causes for spontaneous events |
| title_full_unstemmed | Toddlers infer unobserved causes for spontaneous events |
| title_short | Toddlers infer unobserved causes for spontaneous events |
| title_sort | toddlers infer unobserved causes for spontaneous events |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/94336 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2981-8039 |
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