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Causality influences children's and adults' experience of temporal order
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Tecwyn, Emma C., Bechlivanidis, Christos, Lagnado, David A., Hoerl, Christoph, Lorimer, Sara, Blakey, Emma, McCormack, Teresa and Buehner, Marc J. (2020) Causality influences children's and adults' experience of temporal order. Developmental Psychology, 56 (4). pp. 739-755. doi:10.1037/dev0000889 ISSN 0012-1649.
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Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000889
Abstract
Although it has long been known that time is a cue to causation, recent work with adults has demonstrated that causality can also influence the experience of time. In causal reordering (Bechlivanidis & Lagnado, 2013, 2016) adults tend to report the causally consistent order of events rather than the correct temporal order. However, the effect has yet to be demonstrated in children. Across four preregistered experiments, 4- to 10-year-old children (N = 813) and adults (N = 178) watched a 3-object Michotte-style “pseudocollision.” While in the canonical version of the clip, object A collided with B, which then collided with object C (order: ABC), the pseudocollision involved the same spatial array of objects but featured object C moving before object B (order: ACB), with no collision between B and C. Participants were asked to judge the temporal order of events and whether object B collided with C. Across all age groups, participants were significantly more likely to judge that B collided with C in the 3-object pseudocollision than in a 2-object control clip (where clear causal direction was lacking), despite the spatiotemporal relations between B and C being identical in the two clips (Experiments 1-3). Collision judgments and temporal order judgments were not entirely consistent, with some participants—particularly in the younger age range—basing their temporal order judgments on spatial rather than temporal information (Experiment 4). We conclude that in both children and adults, rather than causal impressions being determined only by the basic spatial–temporal properties of object movement, schemata are used in a top-down manner when interpreting perceptual displays. (APA PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Alternative Title: | |||||||
Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BD Speculative Philosophy |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Philosophy | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Causation, Perception (Philosophy) , Perception in children, Cognition in children , Time perception | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Developmental Psychology | ||||||
Publisher: | American Psychological Association | ||||||
ISSN: | 0012-1649 | ||||||
Official Date: | 5 March 2020 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 56 | ||||||
Number: | 4 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 739-755 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1037/dev0000889 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | "©American Psychological Association, 2020. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. Please do not copy or cite without author's permission. The final article is available, upon publication, at: http://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000889 | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
Copyright Holders: | ©American Psychological Association 2020 | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 10 December 2019 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 10 December 2019 | ||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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