{"pk":24337,"title":"\"Dancing on the ceiling\": The role of different forms of thinking on retrospective reevaluation in children","subtitle":null,"abstract":"An open question in the developmental causal learning literature concerns how children's beliefs about causal systems impact their inferences. This study investigated how 4- and 5-year-olds' causal beliefs related to their “backwards blocking” abilities, as well as whether associative learning or Bayesian inference better explained their judgements. Children were taught either that two causes together produced a larger effect than that produced by each individually or that they produced the same size effect as that produced by either one. A third group received no training. Results indicated that 4-year-olds engaged in backwards blocking only after additivity training and that their inferences mainly matched an associative model. In contrast, 5-year-olds consistently engaged in backwards blocking and produced responses that largely matched a Bayesian model. These findings suggest that the effect of children's beliefs about causal systems on their inferences undergoes a developmental progression and implicate the role of multiple cognitive mechanisms.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Psychology; Causal reasoning; Cognitive development; Development; Bayesian modeling; Computational Modeling; Neural Networks"}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/56j2v353","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Rebecca","middle_name":"","last_name":"Beaton","name_suffix":"","institution":"Vanderbilt University","department":""},{"first_name":"Deon","middle_name":"T.","last_name":"Benton","name_suffix":"","institution":"Vanderbilt University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2024-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/24337/galley/13934/download/"},{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/24337/galley/21758/download/"}]}