FriSem

Speaker: Mariel Goddu, a graduate student from Allison Gopnik's lab, Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley

Title: Causing logical thinking: Early causal reasoning promotes higher order cognitive abilities

Abstract: There is a suite of “higher order” cognitive abilities that we often think of as being uniquely rational, logical, and human. This includes phenomena such as counterfactual thinking and reasoning by analogy. Interestingly, existing research suggests that these skills emerge rather late in development: children appear unable to prepare for multiple, equally probable possibilities or solve analogical transfer tasks until kindergarten. By contrast, children’s skills in causal reasoning emerge very early. Even before they can count or produce grammatical sentences, children can make causal inferences based on statistical data and design novel interventions on a system they have just learned. My research investigates the possibility that certain causal reasoning processes may serve as cognitive precursors to more advanced logical skills. Here, I present results from three projects that suggest that early causal reasoning skills precede and support the development of counterfactual reasoning, variable selection, and analogical transfer in toddlers and preschool-aged children.