A self-agency bias in preschoolers' causal inferences

Tamar Kushnir, Henry M. Wellman, Susan A. Gelman
2009 Developmental Psychology  
Preschoolers' causal learning from intentional actions -causal interventions -is subject to a selfagency bias. We propose that this bias is evidence-based; it is responsive to causal uncertainty. In the current studies, two causes (one child-controlled, one experimenter-controlled) were associated with one or two effects, first independently, then simultaneously. When initial independent effects were probabilistic, and thus subsequent simultaneous actions were causally ambiguous, children
more » ... a self-agency bias. Children showed no bias when initial effects were deterministic. Further controls establish that children's self-agency bias is not a wholesale preference but rather is influenced by uncertainty in causal evidence. These results demonstrate that children's own experience of action influences their causal learning, and suggest possible benefits in uncertain and ambiguous everyday learning contexts.
doi:10.1037/a0014727 pmid:19271843 pmcid:PMC3689272 fatcat:7nya4jwfdreyxatbypcqo64hwq