Cargando…
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...
Autores principales: | , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2014
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4274895/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25566161 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01496 |
_version_ | 1782350058820206592 |
---|---|
author | Muentener, Paul Schulz, Laura |
author_facet | Muentener, Paul Schulz, Laura |
author_sort | Muentener, Paul |
collection | PubMed |
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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4274895 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42748952015-01-06 Toddlers infer unobserved causes for spontaneous events Muentener, Paul Schulz, Laura Front Psychol Psychology 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. Frontiers Media S.A. 2014-12-23 /pmc/articles/PMC4274895/ /pubmed/25566161 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01496 Text en Copyright © 2014 Muentener and Schulz. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Muentener, Paul Schulz, Laura 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 |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4274895/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25566161 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01496 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT muentenerpaul toddlersinferunobservedcausesforspontaneousevents AT schulzlaura toddlersinferunobservedcausesforspontaneousevents |