Thinking backwards about causes and effects

For 7-8-year-olds, who are fluent in English (either monolingual English speakers, or multilingual with regular (50% or more) exposure to English in their daily lives, counting both at home and at school)

This study will take place on a video call, live with a researcher! Clicking on the “Schedule a time to participate” button will send you to an online calendar where you can select a date and time that works for you. In this study, your child will watch a series of short videos and answer questions related to these videos. Your child will be presented with stories about three different causal systems (involving blocks that can make a lightbox turn on), and based on their understanding of the stories, will be prompted to answer questions about what they think would have happened if elements of those stories had been changed.

The purpose of this study is to help us better understand the kinds of situations children can think and talk about. We present children with short stories which use counterfactual conditionals - a type of sentence that lets us talk about events which are not real. For example, “If Giraffes had wings, they would fly” is a counterfactual, because it tells us something about the state of the world if giraffes had wings (even though they don’t in real life!). Through this study we want to analyze whether children respond more or less like adults when thinking about counterfactuals involving reasoning backwards from effect to cause. To do this, we use simple mechanical systems (in which blocks can make a lightbox turn on). For example, if a pink block and a blue block both can make a lightbox turn on if placed on it, we would prompt children to think about where the blocks would have been if the lightbox had been off. This allows us to learn more about the kinds of causal connections children make in counterfactual thinking - and whether they can 'backtrack', or reason backwards from effect to cause, similarly to adults.

10 minutes

For families residing in Canada, you will receive a $5 gift card to Indigo after participation. For families residing in the United States, you will receive a $5 gift card to Amazon.com after participation. To be eligible for compensation, you must meet all of the following criteria: (1) Your child falls within the specified age range for this study, and meets the language requirements and (2) you provide recorded verbal consent. Each child is eligible to participate to receive a gift card only once; participants cannot do the study more than once for compensation. You will receive your gift card via email within 1-10 business days after participation.