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...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Muentener, Paul, Schulz, Laura
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