Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, 5020 Salzburg, Austria.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2013 Mar;114(3):389-404. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2012.10.010. Epub 2012 Dec 5.
The objective of this study was to describe the developmental progression of counterfactual reasoning from childhood to adulthood. In contrast to the traditional view, it was recently reported by Rafetseder and colleagues that even a majority of 6-year-old children do not engage in counterfactual reasoning when asked counterfactual questions (Child Development, 2010, Vol. 81, pp. 376-389). By continuing to use the same method, the main result of the current Study 1 was that performance of the 9- to 11-year-olds was comparable to that of the 6-year-olds, whereas the 12- to 14-year-olds approximated adult performance. Study 2, using an intuitively simpler task based on Harris and colleagues (Cognition, 1996, Vol. 61, pp. 233-259), resulted in a similar conclusion, specifically that the ability to apply counterfactual reasoning is not fully developed in all children before 12 years of age. We conclude that children who failed our tasks seem to lack an understanding of what needs to be changed (events that are causally dependent on the counterfactual assumption) and what needs to be left unchanged and so needs to be kept as it actually happened. Alternative explanations, particularly executive functioning, are discussed in detail.
这项研究的目的是描述反事实推理从儿童期到成年期的发展过程。与传统观点相反，Rafetseder 及其同事最近报告说，即使是大多数 6 岁儿童在被问及反事实问题时也不会进行反事实推理（《儿童发展》，2010 年，第 81 卷，第 376-389 页）。通过继续使用相同的方法，当前研究 1 的主要结果是，9 至 11 岁儿童的表现与 6 岁儿童相当，而 12 至 14 岁儿童的表现接近成人水平。研究 2 使用了基于 Harris 及其同事的直观上更简单的任务（《认知》，1996 年，第 61 卷，第 233-259 页），得出了类似的结论，特别是在 12 岁之前，并非所有儿童都完全具备应用反事实推理的能力。我们的结论是，未能通过我们任务的儿童似乎缺乏对需要改变的内容（与反事实假设因果相关的事件）以及需要保持不变的内容的理解，因此需要保持实际发生的情况。详细讨论了替代解释，特别是执行功能。
