Das Gupta P, Bryant P E
Cognitive Development Unit, Medical Research Council, London.
Child Dev. 1989 Oct;60(5):1138-46.
We report 2 experiments that show a striking development between the ages of 3 and 4 years in children's ability to make causal inferences about sequences of events. The task in the first experiment was to work out what had caused the change to an object that started out as odd (noncanonical) in 1 way and ended up as odd in 2 ways--starting, for example, as a broken cup and ending as a wet and broken cup. When asked to choose the instrument that had caused the change, 3-year-olds often selected the instrument that could have caused the initial state (a hammer, in our example) and not the instrument that would produce the change. 4-year-olds hardly ever made this mistake. In the second experiment, the 3-year-olds were able to make the correct choice when the change was from a canonical to a noncanonical state (cup-wet cup) but had much more difficulty when the change was from noncanonical to canonical (wet cup-dry cup). The difference was much smaller in the older group. The first of these tasks can be solved simply on the basis of knowledge that a particular instrument can cause a particular effect without reference to the initial state. The second task requires attention to the differences between initial and final state. We conclude that the ability to make genuine causal inferences develops between the ages of 3 and 4 years.
我们报告了两项实验，这两项实验表明，儿童对事件序列进行因果推断的能力在3岁至4岁之间有显著发展。在第一个实验中，任务是弄清楚是什么导致一个最初以一种奇怪（非规范）方式呈现的物体发生变化，并最终以两种奇怪方式结束——例如，开始是一个破杯子，最后是一个又湿又破的杯子。当被要求选择导致变化的工具时，3岁的孩子通常会选择可能导致初始状态的工具（在我们的例子中是一把锤子），而不是会产生变化的工具。4岁的孩子几乎从不犯这个错误。在第二个实验中，当变化是从规范状态到非规范状态（杯子-湿杯子）时，3岁的孩子能够做出正确的选择，但当变化是从非规范状态到规范状态（湿杯子-干杯子）时，他们遇到的困难要大得多。在年龄较大的组中，这种差异要小得多。这些任务中的第一个可以仅仅基于特定工具可以产生特定效果的知识来解决，而无需参考初始状态。第二个任务需要关注初始状态和最终状态之间的差异。我们得出结论，做出真正因果推断的能力在3岁至4岁之间发展。
