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Outward differences between cultures are very salient, with Western and East Asian cultures as a prominent comparison pair. A large literature describes cross-cultural variation in cognition, but relatively less research has explored the developmental origins of this variation. This study helps to fill the empirical gap by replicating four prominent findings documenting cross-cultural differences in children's reasoning, visual attention, and social cognition in a cross-sectional sample of 240 3-12-year-olds from the US and China. We observe cross-cultural differences in three of the four tasks and describe the distinct developmental trajectory that each task follows throughout early and middle childhood.

Disparate impact rules are formally neutral but indirectly discriminate against protected groups (i.e., by targeting a characteristic that is more prevalent in a given group). Because these rules are not obviously malicious, they have been widely enacted to circumvent policies against explicit discrimination. In a series of four experiments, we show that adults and children are sensitive to the moral implications of disparate impact rules. However, we also find that they are more accepting of these rules when strong justification is provided, compared to rules with no justification. Crucially, demographic differences also impact people's judgments of disparate impact rules and their creators. We find that conservatives and those from groups not directly affected by the rule tend to be more accepting of it. By studying people's reasoning about disparate impact rules, this work aims to identify the mechanisms by which these rules may evade detection. Finally, we discuss how these insights may inform the development of interventions that highlight the problematic effects of indirectly discriminatory policies.

Although even infants appear to consider multiple possibilities, preschoolers often fail tasks that require reasoning about mutually exclusive alternatives. We review two explanations for this failure: (1) children have a minimal representation of possibility and fail to distinguish necessary from merely possible outcomes; and (2) children are sensitive to this distinction, but competing motivations (e.g., the tendency to explore) can lead to apparent failures. To test these hypotheses, we assessed 3- and 4-year-olds on a novel search task. Here, children searched for an object that was dropped from either a transparent (one necessary location) or opaque (two possible locations) set of inverted Y-shaped tubes. In Exp. 1, we found that children spent less time searching the first location when there were two possible candidates. Exp. 2 replicates these results in a digital task that does not require manual search.

Analogical reasoning is one of the most common ways individuals bring previous experience to bear on unfamiliar situations. Most theories describe this process as a structured comparison that involves mapping the relational properties between a familiar source and unfamiliar target. This both allows the transfer of useful inferences from the source to the target and highlights the common structure shared by both analogs, represented by an abstract schema. This schema can help with identifying and reasoning about structurally similar situations in the future. While researchers have studied how representations of source and target analogs undergo alterations as a result of this mapping process, little attention has been paid to how the abstract schemas thought to guide future analogical reasoning might similarly change with use. We explore this question in two experiments and present evidence that suggests abstract schemas do indeed drift under certain conditions.

To make accurate causal inferences about social-group inequalities, people must consider structural causes. Structural causes are a distinct type of extrinsic cause-they are stable, interconnected societal forces that systematically advantage some social groups and disadvantage others. We propose a new cognitive framework to specify how people attribute inequality to structural causes. This framework is rooted in counterfactual theories of causal judgment and suggests that people will recognize structural factors as causal when they are perceived as "difference-making" for inequality above and beyond any intrinsic causes. Building on this foundation, our framework makes the following contributions. First, we propose specific types of evidence that support difference-making inferences about structural factors: within-group change (i.e., observing that disadvantaged groups' outcomes improve under better societal conditions) and well-matched between-group comparisons (i.e., observing that advantaged group members, who have similar baseline traits to the disadvantaged group, experience more favorable societal conditions and life outcomes). Second, we consider contextual, cognitive, and motivational barriers that may complicate the availability and acceptance of this evidence. We conclude by exploring how the framework might be applied in future research examining people's causal inferences about inequality.

Gathering information via question asking is an essential and effective tool for learning. However, it also requires learners to select from a near infinite space of possible queries. Here, we investigate a potentially powerful guide for question asking in young learners: the relationship between cause and effect. Children (5- and 7-year-olds) read a storybook about an event with an unknown cause and made several choices between two questions to ask about possible candidate causes. Both questions revealed similar information, but only one had the potential to determine whether a candidate was capable of causing the event described. Participants overwhelmingly selected causally relevant over irrelevant questions, with strong performance in both age-groups and for all types of information. These results suggest that young learners employ their prior knowledge of the causal connections between events to identify relevant queries during information search.

Early abstract reasoning follows qualitatively different developmental trajectories in the US and China (Carstensen et al., 2019), but the causal mechanisms for these differences are unknown. Existing accounts implicate several potential factors that differ between the US and China, including language (Hoyos et al., 2016), executive function (Richland et al., 2010), visual attention (Christie et al., 2020), and social reasoning (Jurkat et al., 2022). While there is extensive work documenting both language and executive function in US and Chinese children, much less is known about the development of cross-cultural differences in visual attention and social reasoning. We document abstract reasoning about relations (Ambiguous cRMTS, Carstensen et al., 2019) alongside the potential moderating factors of visual attention (Free Description; Imada et al., 2013), and social reasoning (Causal Attribution, Seiver et al., 2013; Uniqueness Preference, Kim & Markus, 1999) in a cross-sectional sample of 240 3-12-year-olds, and observe both similarities and differences.

Abstract reasoning in early childhood is often described as following a "relational shift," over which children become increasingly sensitive to relations. However, recent work has challenged the generality of this account, showing that children in the US and China follow distinct trajectories in a relational match-to-sample task (Carstensen et al., 2019). This difference aligns with multiple cultural and linguistic factors implicated in relational reasoning, in which English speakers in the US and Mandarin speakers in China appear at opposite ends of a continuum spanning from a focus on objects (US) to relations (CN). We explore early relational reasoning in a context that represents a cultural middle ground with a key linguistic similarity (noun spurts) to the US: Korean-learning children in South Korea. In two experiments with 262 Korean children, we document relational reasoning in this novel cultural context, revealing similarities and differences to developmental trajectories in the US and China.

Identifying abstract relations is essential for commonsense reasoning. Research suggests that even young children can infer relations such as "same" and "different," but often fail to apply these concepts. Might the process of explaining facilitate the recognition and application of relational concepts? Based on prior work suggesting that explanation can be a powerful tool to promote abstract reasoning, we predicted that children would be more likely to discover and use an abstract relational rule when they were prompted to explain observations instantiating that rule, compared to when they received demonstration alone. Five- and 6-year-olds were given a modified Relational Match to Sample (RMTS) task, with repeated demonstrations of relational (same) matches by an adult. Half of the children were prompted to explain these matches; the other half reported the match they observed. Children who were prompted to explain showed immediate, stable success, while those only asked to report the outcome of the pedagogical demonstration did not. Findings provide evidence that explanation facilitates early abstraction over and above demonstration alone.

A large body of research has shown that engaging in self-explanation improves learning across a range of tasks. It has been proposed that the act of explaining draws attention and cognitive resources towards evidence that supports good explanations-information that is broad, abstract, and consistent with prior knowledge-which in turn aids discovery and promotes generalization. However, it remains unclear whether explanation impacts the learning process via improved hypothesis generation, increasing the probability that the most generalizable hypotheses are considered in the first place, or hypothesis evaluation, the appraisal of such hypotheses in light of observed evidence. In two experiments with adults, we address this question by separating hypothesis generation and evaluation in a novel category learning task and quantifying the effect of explaining on each process independently. We find that explanation supports learners' generation of broad and abstract hypotheses but does not impact their evaluation of them. These results provide a more precise account of the process by which explanation impacts learning and offer additional support for the claim that hypothesis generation and evaluation play distinct roles in problem solving.

Identifying abstract relations is essential for commonsense reasoning. Research suggests that even young children can infer relations such as "same" and "different," but often fail to apply these concepts. Might the process of explaining facilitate the recognition and application of relational concepts? Based on prior work suggesting that explanation can be a powerful tool to promote abstract reasoning, we predicted that children would be more likely to discover and use an abstract relational rule when they were prompted to explain observations instantiating that rule, compared to when they received demonstration alone. Five- and 6-year-olds were given a modified Relational Match to Sample (RMTS) task, with repeated demonstrations of relational (same) matches by an adult. Half of the children were prompted to explain these matches; the other half reported the match they observed. Children who were prompted to explain showed immediate, stable success, while those only asked to report the outcome of the pedagogical demonstration did not. Findings provide evidence that explanation facilitates early abstraction over and above demonstration alone.

To improve upon their current knowledge, learners must be able to generate informative data and accurately evaluate this evidence. However, there is substantial disagreement regarding self-directed learners' competence in these behaviors. Researchers in cognitive development have suggested that learners are "intuitive scientists," generating informative actions and rationally coordinating their current observations and prior beliefs from an early age. Conversely, researchers in scientific reasoning report that learners struggle with experimentation and often fail to reach appropriate conclusions from evidence, even as adults. According to the prevailing narrative, these inconsistent findings must be "bridged" to explain the gap between learners' successes and failures. Here, we advocate for an alternative approach. First, we review the research on scientific reasoning and find that there may be less evidence for learners' failures than is typically assumed. Second, we offer a novel interpretation that aims to account for both literatures: we suggest that self-directed learners may be best understood as competent causal reasoners. That is, many seemingly uninformative or irrational behaviors are consistent with the goals of causal learning. This account not only resolves the apparent contradictions in the existing research, but also offers a way forward towards a more accurate and integrated understanding of self-directed learning. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Development and Aging Psychology > Learning Psychology > Reasoning and Decision Making.

During exploration, young children often show an intuitive sensitivity to uncertainty, despite their strong tendency towards overconfidence in their explicit judgments. Here, we examine the development of children's explicit and implicit recognition of uncertainty using the same stimuli. We presented 4- and 5-year-olds with objects that varied in their amount of perceptual occlusion, and assessed their ability to distinguish among them using two types of measures. Experiment 1 used a traditional 3-point confidence scale to examine children's explicit uncertainty judgments. We compared these confidence judgments before and after they observed disconfirming evidence, to assess the impact of this experience on their acknowledgement of uncertainty in later trials. Experiment 2 examined children's exploration preference as a measure of implicit sensitivity to uncertainty. Our results indicate that children intuitively recognize gaps in their knowledge, and that this implicit recognition may be leveraged to support their explicit judgments. Specifically, we found that children's baseline confidence judgments improved significantly following the presentation of disconfirming evidence. Furthermore, when asked to make exploration decisions about the same set of objects, children showed a spontaneous sensitivity to uncertainty, prior to any evidence. Taken together, these results suggest that children's exploration behavior may be used as an early developing measure of uncertainty control and raise the intriguing possibility that the experience of unexpected outcomes may play a role in the development of metacognition.

Knowledge of repeating patterns is foundational for early mathematical thinking. While interventions that rely on direct instruction help children to master specific patterns, they often struggle to transfer this knowledge to new patterns. This paper investigates exploration as a learning strategy for abstract patterning and improving knowledge transfer. In a yoked, between-subjects design, 5- and 6-year-old children (n = 90) were tasked with finding up to three hidden stars in a repeating shape pattern (ABB). Exploration participants (n=45) explored pattern materials themselves, while demonstration participants (n=45) observed the experimenter revealing the contents of each shape in the same order as the exploration counterpart. In a transfer task, children saw the same repeating pattern with different stimuli. We found that 6-year-olds significantly outperformed 5-year-olds in the exploration condition and used more sophisticated patterning strategies. These findings suggest that exploration may support and extend older children’s emerging understanding of underlying repeating pattern units.

The ability to infer general characteristics of populations from specific instances is critical for reasoning. While there is evidence of this capacity in infancy, prior work has not examined children’s ability to use these second-order inferences to make predictions about future outcomes. In the current study, 3-year-olds observed balls drawn at random from two containers. In one sample each ball was a different color. The other sample consisted of balls of only one (Experiment 1) or two (Experiment 2) colors. Children were asked which of the containers was more likely to contain a novel colored ball. A significant majority of children chose the more variable sample’s container. This suggests that 3-year-olds are not only able to make inferences about hidden populations from the variability of observed samples, but also use those inferences to reason beyond their direct experience.

Research has documented children’s understanding that a choice made when constrained to a single option is a poor indicator of another person’s preference. However, when constraints are constant over time—as they often are in social contexts—they may lose their salience. We examined whether children (N = 133, 5- to 12-year-olds) were more likely to refrain from inferring that a constrained actor prefers their choice if they first observe unconstrained actors (Alternatives condition) compared to if they only observe constrained actors (Constant condition). Presence of alternatives was crossed with constraint type: either the second option was hard to access or there was no other option. In line with our predictions, results indicated that observing alternative situations with greater choice increased children’s subsequent attention to constraints. Effects were stronger for the hard to access constraint and for older children.

Self-directed learners are often described as ‘intuitive scientists’, yet they also tend to struggle in assessments of their scientific reasoning. We investigate a novel explanation for this apparent gap between formal and informal scientific inquiry. Specifically, we consider whether learners’ documented failure to correctly apply the control of variables strategy might stem from a mismatch between their causal intuitions and task presentation. Children (7- and 9-year-olds) and adults were tested on a version of a traditional multivariate reasoning task (Tschirgi, 1980) that we modified to clarify ambiguous elements of the causal logic. A significant majority of participants in all age groups selected informative experiments on this modified task, avoiding confounded actions with positive tangible outcomes. This finding contrasts with the longstanding claim that learners do not correctly employ control of variables without extensive training and suggests that self-directed scientific inquiry may be intuitively suited to support causal learning goals.

Children are capable of using the causal properties of objects to determine category membership. Can they also recognize causal system categories, or abstract patterns of causation that apply across phenomena (Rottman et al., 2012)? For example, do children recognize that one causal chain (e.g. the transmission of salmonella across species) shares the same underlying structure as a chain in another domain (e.g. heat transfer between objects)? If so, recognizing that superficially distinct events share the same underlying causal system may facilitate knowledge transfer. In Study 1, 6- to 7-year-olds and adults, but not 4 to 5-year-olds, are capable of identifying simple machines that share the same causal structure. In ongoing work, we control for low-level perceptual similarities and explore whether adults and children recognize similar causal structures among unique mechanical systems. We also consider whether their recognition of causal systems can be used to support knowledge transfer.

Is a cow more closely related to grass or to a chicken? Responses vary by culture and age, among other factors. Those from western societies (or independent-leaning regions within interdependent non-western societies) are more likely to endorse the taxonomic match, the chicken, over the thematic match, grass (Chiu, 1972; Talhelm et al., 2014). This preference has been documented -- largely in western cultures -- to increase over development (e.g., Smiley & Brown, 1979). While neither development nor culture occur independently of the other, comparisons across these areas are problematic. We address one potential barrier to comparing cultural and developmental research using this classic paradigm -- stimulus format -- and show that the use of text (versus image) stimuli can bias participants toward taxonomic responding in some contexts. We present stimuli designed for cross-cultural use with children and adults and document country, regional, and demographic variation across the US and Italy.

During exploration, young children often show an intuitive sensitivity to uncertainty, despite their strong tendency towards overconfidence in their explicit judgments. Here, we examine the development of children's explicit and implicit recognition of uncertainty using the same stimuli. We presented 4- and 5-year-olds with objects that varied in their amount of perceptual occlusion, and assessed their ability to distinguish among them using two types of measures. Experiment 1 used a traditional 3-point confidence scale to examine children's explicit uncertainty judgments. We compared these confidence judgments before and after they observed disconfirming evidence, to assess the impact of this experience on their acknowledgement of uncertainty in later trials. Experiment 2 examined children's exploration preference as a measure of implicit sensitivity to uncertainty. Our results indicate that children intuitively recognize gaps in their knowledge, and that this implicit recognition may be leveraged to support their explicit judgments. Specifically, we found that children's baseline confidence judgments improved significantly following the presentation of disconfirming evidence. Furthermore, when asked to make exploration decisions about the same set of objects, children showed a spontaneous sensitivity to uncertainty, prior to any evidence. Taken together, these results suggest that children's exploration behavior may be used as an early developing measure of uncertainty control and raise the intriguing possibility that the experience of unexpected outcomes may play a role in the development of metacognition.

In this paper, we investigate the informativeness of 4- to 6-year-old (N = 125) children's questions using a combined qualitative and quantitative approach. Children were presented with a hierarchical version of the 20-questions game, in which they were given an array of objects that could be organized into three category levels based on shared features. We then tested whether it is possible to scaffold children's question-asking abilities without extensive training. In particular, we supported children's categorization performance by providing the object-related features needed to ask effective constraint-seeking questions. We found that with both age and scaffolding children asked more effective questions, targeting higher category levels and therefore reaching the solution with fewer questions. We discuss the practical and theoretical implications of these results.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, online methodologies for developmental research have become an essential norm. Already, there are numerous options for recruiting and testing developmental participants, and they differ from each other in a variety of ways. While recent research has discussed the potential benefits and practical trade-offs of these different platforms, the potential empirical consequences of choosing among them are still unknown. It is critical for the field to understand not only how children's performance in an online context compares to traditional settings, but also how it differs across online platforms. This study offers the first comparative look at the same developmental task across different online research methodologies, allowing for direct comparison and critical examination of each. We conducted three versions of a test of preschoolers' ability to generate and apply second-order inferences to predict novel outcomes. Experiment 1 is an in-person task conducted at public testing sites in the vicinity of the university. In Experiment 2, we conducted an online-moderated version of the same task, in which an experimenter presented a recording of the procedure during a live video call with families over Zoom. Finally, Experiment 3 is an online-unmoderated version of the task, in which the same videos were presented entirely asynchronously using the Lookit platform. Results suggest that online methodologies may introduce difficulties and age-related differences in young children's performance not observed in person. We consider these results in light of the previous online developmental replications, suggest possible interpretations, and offer initial recommendations to help future developmental scientists make informed choices about whether and how to conduct their research online.

We explore the link between children’s gesture production and analogical reasoning. Specifically, we ask whether children who spontaneously gesture when completing a retelling task are more likely to engage in analogical transfer, compared to those who do not gesture. To test this, 85 5-7-year-olds listened to three superficially distinct stories that shared a common abstract problem and solution. After each of the first two exemplar stories, participants were asked to retell the story events to a naïve listener and their speech and spontaneous gesture(s) were coded. For the third story, participants were asked to generate the analogous solution themselves. Results indicate a significant relationship between children’s analogical transfer and gesture production. This preliminary study suggests that children’s spontaneous gestures may provide a window into their analogical processing. We discuss future directions aimed at further examining the mechanism underlying this relationship.

Counterfactual theories of causal judgment propose that people infer causality between events by comparing an actual outcome with what would have happened in a relevant alternative situation. If the candidate cause is “difference-making”, people infer causality. This framework has not been applied to people’s judgments about unprecedented societal events (e.g., global pandemics), in which people have limited causal knowledge (e.g., about effective policies). In these contexts, it is less clear how people reason counterfactually. This study examined this issue. Participants judged whether a mandatory evacuation reduced population bite rates during a novel insect infestation. People tended to rely on prior causal knowledge, unless data from close alternatives (i.e., structurally similar counterfactuals) provided counterevidence. There were also notable individual differences, such that some people privileged prior knowledge regardless of the available counterevidence or privileged far alternatives (i.e., structurally distinct counterfactuals), which may have implications for understanding public disagreement about policy issues.

A deep understanding of any phenomenon requires knowing how its causal elements are related to one another. Here, we examine whether children recognize similar causal structures across superficially distinct events. We presented 4- to 7-year-olds with three-variable narratives in which story events unfold according to a causal chain or a common effect structure. We then asked children to make judgments about which stories are the most similar. Results indicate that the ability to recognize and use abstract causal structure as a metric of similarity develops gradually between the ages of 4 and 7: While we find no evidence that 4-year-olds recognize the common causal structure between events, 7-year-olds have a relatively mature understanding of causal system categories when making similarity judgements. Five- and 6-year-olds show mixed success. We discuss these findings in light of children’s developing causal and abstract reasoning and propose directions for future work.

What visualization strategies do people use to communicate abstract knowledge to others? We developed a drawing paradigm to elicit visual explanations about novel machines and obtained detailed annotations of the semantic information conveyed in each drawing. We found that these visual explanations contained: (1) greater emphasis on causally relevant parts of the machine, (2) less emphasis on structural features that were visually salient but causally irrelevant, and (3) more symbols, relative to baseline drawings intended only to communicate the machines' appearance. However, this overall pattern of emphasis did not necessarily improve naive viewers' ability to infer how to operate the machines, nor their ability to identify them, suggesting a potential mismatch between what people believe a visual explanation contains and what may be most useful. Taken together, our findings advance our understanding of how communicative goals constrain visual communication of abstract knowledge across behavioral contexts.

We investigate whether reasoners are sensitive to the underlying causal structure of an event when evaluating its likely causes. Participants read stories in which two unknown causes led to an outcome in either a converging or linear structure. They were then asked to select two of three possible causes to complete the story. Two candidates were semantically-related, direct causes of the outcome. The third was an unrelated, indirect cause of the outcome that was conditional on a directly-related event. Differences in abstract structure, and not association, guided people’s evaluations of the most likely causes (e.g., ‘breeze blowing’ was judged an unlikely direct cause of a noisy room compared to ‘alarm ringing’ or ‘door slamming’, but a likely indirect cause, conditional on the door slamming). Results demonstrate that people consider abstract information about the structure of an event when evaluating causes. Knowledge of causal structure may therefore guide hypothesis evaluation.

This study explored children's causal reasoning about the past and future. U.S. adults (n = 60) and 3-to-6-year-olds (n = 228) from an urban, middle-class population (49% female; [approximately] 45% white) participated between 2017 and 2019. Participants were told three-step causal stories and asked about the effects of a change to the second event. Given direct interventions on the second event, children of all ages judged that the past event still occurred, suggesting even preschoolers understand time is irreversible. However, children reasoned differently when told that the second event did not occur, with no specific cause. In this case, 6-year-olds and adults inferred that the past event also did not occur. In both conditions, inferences that future events would change emerged gradually between 4 and 6.

We investigated whether children preferentially select informative actions and make accurate inferences from the outcome of their own interventions in a causal learning task. Four- to six-year-olds were presented with a novel system composed of gears that could operate according to two possible causal structures (single or multiple cause). Given the choice between interventions (i.e., removing one of the two gears to observe the remaining gear in isolation), children demonstrated a clear preference for the action that revealed the true causal structure, and made subsequent causal judgments that were consistent with the outcome observed. Experiment 2 addressed the possibility that performance was driven by children's tendency to select an intervention that would produce a desirable effect (i.e., spinning gears), rather than to disambiguate the causal structure. These results replicate our initial findings in a context in which the informative action was less likely to produce a positive outcome than the uninformative one. Experiment 3 serves as a control demonstrating that children's success in the previous experiments is not due to their use of low-level strategies. We discuss these findings in terms of their significance for understanding the development of scientific reasoning and the role of self-directed actions in early causal learning.

We assessed whether an artifact's design can facilitate recognition of abstract causal rules. In Experiment 1, 152 three-year-olds were presented with evidence consistent with a relational rule (i.e., pairs of same or different blocks activated a machine) using two differently designed machines. In the standard-design condition, blocks were placed on top of the machine; in the relational-design condition, blocks were placed into openings on either side. In Experiment 2, we assessed whether this design cue could facilitate adults' (N = 102) inference of a distinct conjunctive cause (i.e., that two blocks together activate the machine). Results of both experiments demonstrated that causal inference is sensitive to an artifact's design: Participants in the relational-design conditions were more likely to infer rules that were a priori unlikely. Our findings suggest that reasoning failures may result from difficulty generating the relevant rules as cognitive hypotheses but that artifact design aids causal inference. These findings have clear implications for creating intuitive learning environments.

We investigate the relationship between exploratory learningand confidence scale judgments in understanding andimproving children’s early recognition of uncertainty. Four-and five-year-olds were presented with stimuli that varied intheir amount of occlusion. We assessed children’s ability todistinguish between these levels of uncertainty using twotypes of measures. Experiment 1 used a traditional 3-pointconfidence scale to examine explicit uncertainty judgments.Experiment 2 examined exploration preference as an implicitmeasure of uncertainty using the same stimuli. We comparedchildren’s performance on these two tasks before and aftertheir experience of disconfirming evidence, to assess theimpact of surprising events on the recognition of uncertainty.Results indicate that children intuitively recognize gaps intheir knowledge and express this in their exploratory behaviorbefore they are able to spontaneously produce accurateconfidence judgments. We also find that this implicitrecognition of uncertainty may be leveraged to support andimprove explicit judgments, even without extensive training.

A large literature on the development of causal reasoningcharacterizes early childhood as a period of curiosity,exploration, and experimentation. This suggests that a noveltypreference may be a universal hallmark of early causallearning. Functionally, such a bias might serve to directattention towards new opportunities for knowledge gain. Analternative possibility is that a preference for exploring noveloutcomes develops over time. In three experiments with 2- to5-year-olds, we investigate the developmental trajectory ofchildren’s preference for causal processes that producereliable versus novel outcomes. We find evidence for adevelopmental shift between ages 2 and 3: while two-year-olds trend toward a preference for reliable over noveloutcomes, older children clearly prefer novel ones. Wediscuss possible adaptive reasons for this developmental shift.

Although persistence is essential to overcoming challenges andmaking new discoveries, continued effort can be costly. Evenvery young learners must make decisions about when to investeffort and when to abandon a task. In the current study, weexplore whether children’s decisions about when to exert effortare influenced by the information they stand to gain in aparticular learning situation. That is, we examine whetherproviding children with solutions after they attempt tocomplete a challenging task reduces their persistence. Sixty 4-and 5-year-old children completed a series of iSpy puzzles andthen attempted to activate a novel toy. Children were eitherpresented with the solutions after attempting each task or givenno information about the answers. Our results demonstrate thatchildren persisted longer at attempting to activate a novel toywhen their effort was more likely to be the only source ofinformation: children who expected to be provided with thesolution gave up faster than those who did not. We discuss theimplications of these findings on children’s rational decisionsabout when effort is worthwhile, and consider how providinganswers might impact motivation and curiosity more broadly.

Young children rapidly infer causal relations by trackingcontingencies between causes and their effects, and cangeneralize these rules to novel instances of the same cause.However, this is distinct from the ability to make inferencesabout whether a particular cause is likely to produce noveleffects. Here, we investigate the development of two-, three-,and four-year-olds’ ability to recognize and use informationabout a cause’s variability to make predictions about othernovel outcomes it might produce. Experiment 1 finds thatchildren as young as two years of age infer that a cause thathas produced variable, rather than deterministic outcomes ismore likely to produce a novel, previously unobserved effect.Experiment 2 finds that four-year-olds, but not two- andthree-year-olds, infer that a higher variability cause is morelikely to produce a novel outcome than a lower variabilitycause.

Early abstract reasoning has typically been characterized by a "relational shift," in which children initially focus on object features but increasingly come to interpret similarity in terms of structured relations. An alternative possibility is that this shift reflects a learned bias, rather than a typical waypoint along a universal developmental trajectory. If so, consistent differences in the focus on objects or relations in a child's learning environment could create distinct patterns of relational reasoning, influencing the type of hypotheses that are privileged and applied. Specifically, children in the United States may be subject to culture-specific influences that bias their reasoning toward objects, to the detriment of relations. In experiment 1, we examine relational reasoning in a population with less object-centric experience-3-y-olds in China-and find no evidence of the failures observed in the United States at the same age. A second experiment with younger and older toddlers in China (18 to 30 mo and 30 to 36 mo) establishes distinct developmental trajectories of relational reasoning across the two cultures, showing a linear trajectory in China, in contrast to the U-shaped trajectory that has been previously reported in the United States. In a third experiment, Chinese 3-y-olds exhibit a bias toward relational solutions in an ambiguous context, while those in the United States prefer object-based solutions. Together, these findings establish population-level differences in relational bias that predict the developmental trajectory of relational reasoning, challenging the generality of an initial object focus and suggesting a critical role for experience.

Extensive research has explored the ability of young children to learn about the causal structure of the world from patterns of evidence. These studies, however, have been conducted with middle-class samples from North America and Europe. In the present study, low-income Peruvian 4- and 5-year-olds and adults, low-income U.S. 4- and 5-year-olds in Head Start programs, and middle-class children from the United States participated in a causal learning task (N = 435). Consistent with previous studies, children learned both specific causal relations and more abstract causal principles across culture and socioeconomic status (SES). The Peruvian children and adults generally performed like middle-class U.S. children and adults, but the low-SES U.S. children showed some differences.

We investigate whether children preferentially selectinformative actions and make accurate inferences from theoutcome of their own interventions in a causal learning task.Four- to six-year-olds were presented with a novel systemcomposed of two gears that could operate according to twopossible causal structures (single or multiple cause). Giventhe choice between interventions (i.e., removing one of thegears to observe the remaining gear in isolation), childrendemonstrated a clear preference for the action that revealedthe true causal structure, and made subsequent causaljudgments that were consistent with the outcome observed.Experiment 2 addressed the possibility that performance wasdriven by children’s tendency to select an intervention thatwould produce a desirable effect (i.e., spinning gears), ratherthan to disambiguate the causal structure. The results replicateour initial findings in a context in which the informativeaction was less likely to produce a positive outcome than theuninformative one. We discuss these results in terms of theirsignificance for understanding both the development ofscientific reasoning and the role of self-directed actions inearly learning.

Children often fail to control variables when conducting testsof hypotheses, yielding confounded evidence. We propose thatgetting children to think of alternative possibilities throughcounterfactual prompts may scaffold their ability to controlvariables, by engaging them in an imagined intervention that isstructurally similar to controlled actions in scientificexperiments. Findings provide preliminary support for thishypothesis. Seven- to 10-year-olds who were prompted to thinkcounterfactually showed better performance on post-testcontrol of variables tasks than children who were given controlprompts. These results inform debates about the contributionof counterfactual reasoning to scientific reasoning, and suggestthat counterfactual prompts may be useful in science learningcontexts.

Causal and temporal reasoning are fundamentally linked, butfew studies have directly examined how the ability to makecausal inferences about the past vs. the future develops. We useda counterfactual reasoning task to explore 4- to 6-year-oldchildren’s understanding of the causal relationships among past,present, and future events. Like adults, even 4-year-olds judgedthat future, but not past, events could be altered by interventionsin the present. This early sensitivity to the causal asymmetrybetween the past and future became more pronounced with age.We also found that children and adults selectively andappropriately use evidence about the present to make inferencesabout past events. Implications for theoretical accounts of thedevelopment of causal reasoning and abstract concepts of timeare discussed.

How do you make sense of an unconventional graph? Buildingon research demonstrating that prior knowledge of graphicalconventions is difficult to overcome, we reconstrue graphreading as an insight problem. We hypothesize that imposing amental impasse during a particular type of graph reading taskwill improve comprehension by inducing a sense ofpuzzlement, prompting learners to reconsider theirinterpretation. We find support for this proposal in a between-subjects experiment in which participants presented with animpasse-formulated version of graph reading questions aresignificantly more likely to correctly interpret a graph featuringan unconventional coordinate system. We characterize thedifferential patterns of mouse movements for learners betweenconditions and discuss implications for the use of novelgraphical forms in science communication.

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.

Often, the evidence we observe is consistent with more than one explanation. How do learners discriminate among candidate causes? The current studies examine whether counterfactuals help 5-year olds (N = 120) select between competing hypotheses and compares the effectiveness of these prompts to a related scaffold. In Experiment 1, counterfactuals support evidence evaluation, leading children to privilege and extend the cause that accounted for more data. In Experiment 2, the hypothesis that accounted for the most evidence was pitted against children's prior beliefs. Children who considered alternative outcomes privileged the hypothesis that accounted for more observations, whereas those who explained relied on prior beliefs. Findings demonstrate that counterfactuals recruit attention to disambiguating evidence and outperform explanation when data contrast with existing beliefs.

Analogical reasoning is essential for transfer by supporting recognition of relational similarity. However, not all analogies are created equal. The source and target can be similar (near), or quite different (far). Previous research suggests that close comparisons facilitate children's relational abstraction. On the other hand, evidence from adults indicates that the process of solving far analogies may be a more effective scaffold for transfer of a relational strategy. We explore whether engaging with far analogies similarly induces such a strategy in preschoolers. Children were provided with the opportunity to solve either a near or far spatial analogy using a pair of puzzle boxes that varied in perceptual similarity (Experiment 1), or to participate in a control task (Experiment 2). All groups were then presented with an ambiguous spatial reasoning task featuring both object and relational matches. We were interested in the relationship between near and far conditions and two effects: (a) children's tendency to spontaneously draw an analogy when solving the initial puzzle, and (b) their tendency to privilege relational matches over object matches in a subsequent, ambiguous task. Although children were more likely to spontaneously draw an analogy in the near condition, those who attempted the far analogy were more likely to privilege a relational match on the subsequent task. We argue that the process of solving a far analogy-regardless of a learner's spontaneous success in identifying the relation-contextualizes an otherwise ambiguous learning problem, making it easier for children to access and apply relational hypotheses. (PsycINFO Database Record

Here we explore whether drawing upon preschooler’sintuitive causal reasoning abilities may bolster their attentionto the presence of conflicting data. Specifically, we examinewhether prompting children to think counterfactually aboutalternative outcomes facilitates their anomaly detection in acausal reasoning task. The current task assesses whetherchildren in two conditions successfully differentiate betweenpotential causes: one that accounts for 100% of the data (noanomalies), and one that accounts for 75% of the data(anomalies observed). Results indicate that counterfactualprompts lead 5-year-olds to privilege the hypothesis thataccounts for more of their observations, and also supporttransfer of this hypothesis to inform their inferences aboutnovel cases. Findings suggest that counterfactual scaffoldsmay be beneficial in promoting causal reasoning in children.

Research on the development of future hypothetical andcounterfactual thinking suggests that children as old as fivemay be unable to consider multiple, equally probablepossibilities simultaneously. Yet, a large literature on thedevelopment of causal reasoning suggests that much youngerchildren are able to generate, evaluate, and test causalhypotheses, often by integrating information about severalcandidate causes at once. The current research seeks to bridgethese two bodies of research. In three experiments, adults andtoddlers (18–30 months) observe a sequence of evidence thatis equally consistent with two hypotheses, each occupying adifferent level of abstraction (individual vs. relational).Results suggest that learners generate more than one potentialcause, hold both in mind, and flexibly apply the appropriatehypothesis to inform their inferences at test. Findingschallenge previous suggestions that much older children failto consider multiple, equally probable possibilities.

Although storybooks are often used as pedagogical tools for conveying moral lessons to children, the ability to spontaneously extract "the moral" of a story develops relatively late. Instead, children tend to represent stories at a concrete level - one that highlights surface features and understates more abstract themes. Here we examine the role of explanation in 5- and 6-year-old children's developing ability to learn the moral of a story. Two experiments demonstrate that, relative to a control condition, prompts to explain aspects of a story facilitate children's ability to override salient surface features, abstract the underlying moral, and generalize that moral to novel contexts. In some cases, generating an explanation is more effective than being explicitly told the moral of the story, as in a more traditional pedagogical exchange. These findings have implications for moral comprehension, the role of explanation in learning, and the development of abstract reasoning in early childhood.