Study title

United Kingdom

Individual

This project involved testing of children and adults using a series of tasks specifically designed for this project. Participants were tested individually in their schools or in a psychology laboratory. Seven studies were conducted in total. Studies 1-3 involved 188 children aged 4-8 years using variations of a short cognitive task in which children observed a mechanical system operate and then made judgments about its causal structure. Children were also asked to make judgments about what would happen if the experimenter fixed or altered one of the components.Study 4 involved 227 children aged 5-8 years and 74 adults. Participants again completed a short cognitive task that required them making causal structure judgments, with the cues for these judgments varied across three conditions.Studies 5 & 6 involved 229 children aged 5-8 years and 107 adults. Participants completed a similar cognitive task as in the previous studies, but the cues that were available for making their causal judgments were different than in the previous studies. Children watched as the experimenter acted on components in the system. In Study 5, there were three conditions which again varied the specific nature of the cues; in Study 6 there was one condition, but the cues were richer than in Study 5.Study 7 involved 235 children aged 5-8 assigned to one of three conditions in which children either acted freely on the system, observed the experimenter act, or acted themselves according to the experimenter's instructions. Data from each one of these studies can be made available as an SPSS file, although each will require an accompanying document explaining the nature of the data. Thus, there would be 14 files in total.