The Development of Casual Explanatory Reasoning.

Abstract

Young children actively seek to understand the world around them; they construct causal explanations for how and why things happen. The early-developing capacity for causal explanatory reasoning raises several questions: How do children assemble causal-explanatory systems of knowledge? What motivates children to construct causal explanations? What can the kinds of events that trigger causal explanatory reasoning tell us about the function of children’s explanations? In a series of studies with preschool children, contrastive outcomes were used as an experimental paradigm for studying the kinds of events that provoke children’s causal explanations. In Study 1 (N=48, age range 3,2 to 5,6) and Study 2 (N=32, age range 3,0 to 4,11), in order to investigate two competing hypotheses about the function of children’s explanations, events that were inconsistent with children’s prior knowledge were simultaneously contrasted with events that were consistent with children’s prior knowledge. Results suggest that inconsistent outcomes are an especially powerful trigger for children’s explanations, and that children provide explanations for inconsistent outcomes that refer to underlying, internal causal properties, overriding perceptual appearances. Study 3(N=28 children, age range 3,1 to 5,2; N=16 adults) specifically targeted state-change and negative outcomes as additional kinds of explanatory triggers, within a knowledge-rich context (illness). In Study 3, preschool children’s causal reasoning about illness was investigated, specifically, their explanations for preventing illness versus curing illness. Results indicate that state-change and negative outcomes provoke children’s causal explanations. As predicted, illness prevention provokes explanations less often than illness cure or treatment. In sum, data provide evidence for the interplay of three distinct, but interrelated biases that guide children’s causal explanatory reasoning. The data also provide insight into the function of children’s explanations and empirical evidence for the kinds of events that motivate children to construct explanations.