Reasoning and cue competition effects in causal learning: A developmental study
Lead Research Organisation:
Queen's University Belfast
Department Name: Sch of Psychology
Abstract
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Organisations
Publications
Simms V
(2012)
Additivity pretraining and cue competition effects: developmental evidence for a reasoning-based account of causal learning.
in Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes
McCormack T
(2013)
Blocking in children's causal learning depends on working memory and reasoning abilities.
in Journal of experimental child psychology
McCormack T
(2013)
Encouraging children to think counterfactually enhances blocking in a causal learning task.
in Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006)
| Description | Learning to interact with the world successfully requires learning about cause and effect relationships - known as causal learning. This project examined such learning in children aged 4-7 years, focusing in particular on whether this type of learning is by its nature effortful and requires being able to reason logically. Across a series of studies, we found that causal learning improved in this age range. Being able to reason logically was important for some aspects of learning. Moreover, children with better working memory abilities were also better learners in this task, showing that this type of memory - involving holding limited amounts of information in mind for short time periods - is important for learning. Although 4-5-year-olds performed less well than 6-to-7-year-olds across our studies, in the final study we were able to boost their performance to match that of the older children by encouraging them to think in a new way about the evidence that was shown to them. Encouraging children to think counterfactually - to think about how outcomes might have been different - improved subsequent learning. These findings have implications for how we characterize the nature of learning, not just in children but also in adults. |
| Exploitation Route | Two aspects of our findings also point to broader impact. First, we have found new evidence for the importance of working memory even in this basic type of learning, a finding that provides support for the recent emphasis on working memory skills as critical in educational settings. Second, our finding that learning in younger children can be enhanced by encouraging children to think counterfactually suggests a new direction of applied research. Emerging studies with adults have indicated that adopting a "counterfactual mind-set" can improve problem-solving skills and reasoning from evidence. Our results suggest that it might be possible to extend this approach to children, and the PI is currently exploring the potential of this approach as a line of research that would have educational implications. |
| Sectors | Education |