Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
Child Dev. 2021 Nov;92(6):2244-2251. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13668. Epub 2021 Sep 7.
The ability to consider multiple possibilities forms the basis for a wide variety of human-unique cognitive capacities. When does this skill develop? Previous studies have narrowly focused on children's ability to prepare for incompatible future outcomes. Here, we investigate this capacity in a causal learning context. Adults (N = 109) and 18- to 30-month olds (N = 104) observed evidence that was consistent with two hypotheses, each occupying a different level of abstraction (individual vs. relational causation). Results suggest that adults and toddlers identified multiple candidate causes for an effect, held these possibilities in mind, and flexibly applied the appropriate hypothesis to inform subsequent inferences. These findings challenge previous suggestions that the ability to consider multiple alternatives does not emerge until much later in development.
考虑多种可能性的能力是人类各种独特认知能力的基础。这种技能是什么时候发展起来的？之前的研究狭隘地集中在儿童为不兼容的未来结果做准备的能力上。在这里，我们在因果学习的背景下研究这种能力。成年人（N=109）和 18 至 30 个月大的婴儿（N=104）观察到的证据与两个假设一致，每个假设都占据了不同的抽象层次（个体与关系因果关系）。结果表明，成年人和幼儿为一个效应确定了多个候选原因，牢记这些可能性，并灵活应用适当的假设来为后续推理提供信息。这些发现挑战了之前的观点，即考虑多种选择的能力直到发育后期才会出现。
