The Role of Preschoolers' Social Understanding in Evaluating the Informativeness of Causal Interventions

Autor/inn/en	Kushnir, Tamar; Wellman, Henry M.; Gelman, Susan A.
Titel	The Role of Preschoolers' Social Understanding in Evaluating the Informativeness of Causal Interventions
Quelle	In: Cognition, 107 (2008) 3, S.1084-1092 (9 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0010-0277
DOI	10.1016/j.cognition.2007.10.004
Schlagwörter	Causal Models; Toys; Inferences; Preschool Children; Child Development; Intervention; Influences; Cognitive Processes; Evaluation; Thinking Skills + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Kausalanalyse; Toy; Spielzeug; Inference; Inferenz; Pre-school age; Preschool age; Child; Children; Pre-school education; Preschool education; Vorschulalter; Kind; Kinder; Vorschulkind; Vorschulkinder; Vorschulerziehung; Vorschule; Kindesentwicklung; Influence; Einfluss; Einflussfaktor; Cognitive process; Kognitiver Prozess; Evaluierung; Denkfähigkeit
Abstract	Preschoolers use information from interventions, namely intentional actions, to make causal inferences. We asked whether children consider some interventions to be more informative than others based on two components of an actor's knowledge state: whether an actor "possesses" causal knowledge, and whether an actor is allowed to "use" their knowledge in a given situation. Three- and four-year-olds saw a novel toy that activated in the presence of certain objects. Two actors, one knowledgeable about the toy and one ignorant, each tried to activate the toy with an object. In Experiment 1, either the actors chose objects or the child chose for them. In Experiment 2, the actors chose objects blindfolded. Objects were always placed on the toy simultaneously, and thus were equally associated with the effect. Preschoolers' causal inferences favored the knowledgeable actor's object "only" when he was allowed to choose it (Experiment 1). Thus, children consider both personal and situational constraints on knowledge when evaluating the informativeness of causal interventions. (Author).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10