Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria.
Child Dev. 2010 Jan-Feb;81(1):376-89. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01401.x.
This study investigated at what point in development 3- to 6-year-old children begin to demonstrate counterfactual reasoning by controlling for fortuitously correct answers that result from basic conditional reasoning. Basic conditional reasoning occurs when one applies typical regularities (such as "If 'whenever' it doesn't rain the street is dry") to counterfactual questions (such as "If it had not rained, would the street be wet or dry?") without regard to actual events (e.g., if street cleaners had just been washing the street). In counterfactual reasoning, however, the conditional reasoning must be constrained by actual events (according to the "nearest possible world"). In situations when counterfactual reasoning and basic conditional reasoning would yield the same answers, even the youngest children gave mostly correct answers. However, tasks in which the 2 reasoning strategies resulted in different answers proved unusually difficult even for the older children.
本研究旨在探讨 3 至 6 岁儿童在何种发展阶段开始通过控制基本条件推理中偶然正确的答案来展示反事实推理。基本条件推理发生在一个人将典型的规律（例如“如果‘每当’不下雨，街道就是干燥的”）应用于反事实问题（例如“如果没有下雨，街道会是湿的还是干的？”）而不考虑实际事件（例如，如果街道清洁工刚刚在清洗街道）时。然而，在反事实推理中，条件推理必须受到实际事件的限制（根据“最接近的可能世界”）。在反事实推理和基本条件推理会产生相同答案的情况下，即使是最小的孩子也给出了大部分正确的答案。然而，在两种推理策略产生不同答案的情况下，即使是年龄较大的孩子也发现任务异常困难。
