Children's predictions of consistency in people's actions.

Full Abstract

Past research suggests that young children are often reluctant to generalize about people's behavior. Three experiments involving 102 4-5-year-olds, 84 7-8-year-olds, and 107 adults explored the conditions under which inductive inferences about people are made. There was an age-based increase in propensity to predict consistency in psychological/intentional causal relations. Children often predicted change; people would behave differently in the future than they did in the past. Younger children limited predictions of consistency to non-psychological contexts. Older children showed some appreciation of stable motivations (e.g. traits, preferences). The results are consistent with the hypothesis that children's theories of mind emphasize situational influences, with personal influences appearing in middle-childhood.

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Author information

Author/s: Kalish, Charles W (CW);

Affiliation: Department of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1025 W. Johnson Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA. cwkalish@facstaff.wisc.edu

Grants: R01 HD37520 (Agency:United States NICHD)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: Cognition (Cognition), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Jul; vol 84 (issue 3) : pp 237-65

Dates: Created 2002/06/04; Completed 2002/09/17; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 12044735, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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