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{
    "pk": 49270,
    "title": "Cause and fault in development",
    "subtitle": null,
    "abstract": "Responsibility requires causation. But there are different kinds of causes. Some are connected to their effects; others are disconnected. We ask how children's developing ability to distinguish causes relates to their understanding of moral responsibility. We found in Experiment 1 that when Andy hits Suzy with his bike, she falls into a fence and it breaks, 3-year-old children treated ``caused'', ``break'' and ``fault'' as referring to the direct cause, Suzy. By 4, they differentiated causes: Andy ``caused'' the fence to break, it's his ``fault'', but Suzy ``broke'' it. We found in Experiment 2 that when the chain involved disconnection, 3-year-olds focused only on the direct cause. Around 5 they distinguished causes, saying that the disconnecting cause ``caused'' an object to break, it's their ``fault'', but the direct cause ``broke'' it.  Our findings relate to the outcome-to-intention shift in moral responsibility and suggest a more fundamental shift in children's understanding of causation.",
    "language": "eng",
    "license": {
        "name": "",
        "short_name": "",
        "text": null,
        "url": ""
    },
    "keywords": [
        {
            "word": "Linguistics; Philosophy; Psychology; Causal reasoning; Cognitive development; Development; Language and thought; Language understanding; Social cognition; Developmental analysis"
        }
    ],
    "section": "Papers with Oral Presentation",
    "is_remote": true,
    "remote_url": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/26s3s2tk",
    "frozenauthors": [
        {
            "first_name": "David",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Rose",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Stanford",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Cici",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Hou",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Stanford University",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Shaun",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Nichols",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Cornell University",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Tobias",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Gerstenberg",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Stanford University",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Ellen",
            "middle_name": "M",
            "last_name": "Markman",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Stanford University",
            "department": ""
        }
    ],
    "date_submitted": null,
    "date_accepted": null,
    "date_published": "2025-01-01T18:00:00Z",
    "render_galley": null,
    "galleys": [
        {
            "label": "PDF",
            "type": "pdf",
            "path": "https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49270/galley/37231/download/"
        }
    ]
}