Let's knock over the dominoes!

For 3- to 6-year-olds

Your child will see pictures of dominoes in different arrangements. Sometimes, we will ask which dominoes will fall when we push one domino over. Other times, we will ask which domino we should push to cause them all to fall over. The dominoes are usually all visible but at times a screen will cover many of them and your child will guess what happened to the dominoes under the screen! Along the way, your child will be helping a bunny reach a carrot to eat.

We know that children can imagine what will happen in simple physical events (like where a ball might bounce after hitting another ball), but we don't know how well very young children can chain together more complicated structures. This study focuses on this question - young children can predict that a finger will knock over one domino, but can they continue the sequence of events to predict that the first domino will knock over a second, and the second domino will knock over a third, etc? Your child's participation will help us understand a fundamental part of how children reason about physical causes and effects.

15 minutes

You will receive a $5 Amazon.com gift card within two weeks of completing the study. To be eligible for compensation, your child must be older than three and younger than seven years old, and must be visible in the consent video. We can provide only one gift card per participant.