Research On Influencing Factor Of Preschoolers' Causal Inferences In Conflicting Situations

Causal inference is an indispensable cognitive element for people to think and solve complex problems in natural and social environment.It is also an important cognitive process to help people interact with the surrounding environment.Informant's testimony,statistical information and experimental results are the basic materials for children's causal inferences,but the psychological mechanism of the interaction of the three kinds of materials in children's causal inferences has not elucidated.In this study,the six experiments were implemented to explore the interaction mode of conflicting evidence in children's causal reasoning.Moreover,children's perception of testimony's reliability and informant's self-awareness were analyzed simultaneously.Experiment 1 adopted a 2×2 completely randomized design.The independent variable was the testimony's reliability(two levels: reliable,unreliable)and the order of evidence(two levels: testimony prior to observations,observations prior to testimony),the dependent variable was the frequency of children's choice of candidate cause.The results showed that there were more children to choose cause according to testimony contradicting observations in condition that observations prior to testimony,and according to observations in condition that testimony prior to observations,resulting in a recency effect.Children were not sensitive to the testimony's reliability and informant's self-awareness.Experiment 1 found that children were not sensitive to the testimony's reliability,which might be unaware of the information of testimony's reliability.Experiment 2adopted the same experiment design of experiment 1,but appended a reliability question to the end of testimony.The results showed that there were more children in condition of reliable testimony than in condition of unreliable testimony to choose cause according to testimony,but the effect of evidence order was removed.Experiment 3 controlled the order of evidence,added summary questions to help children to make clear of the mistakes of the informant,explored children's causal inferences from conflicting testimony and independent exploration.The results showed that children were more likely to choose cause that the reliable testimony endorsed than unreliable testimony did;“Summing up questions” could help childrento perceive informant's mistakes;Children were sensitive to informant's self-awareness and credibility.Experiment 4 explored the interaction between contrasting observations and independent exploration in children's causal reasoning.The results showed that: under the condition that only one kind of evidence was obtained,most of the children inferred causality based on the evidence obtained;Under the condition that the two kinds of evidence were obtained,the children could infer causality by integrating information from these sources.But the effect of independent exploration on children's causal reasoning was greater than that of observations.Experiment 5 explored children's causal inferences from conflicting testimony,observations and independent exploration.The results showed that order of evidence brought about significant recency effect in “independent exploration is in the final”experimental condition.And that most of the children(59%)inferred causality based on the results of independent exploration,the proportion of children(24%)inferred causality based on informant's testimony had no significant difference with the random level(33%).The proportion of children(17%)inferred causality based on observations was significantly lower than the random level.Experiment 6 explored the effect of evidence accumulation in children's causal inferences.The same method as experiment 5 was used to ensure children's causal inferences based on three kinds of evidence.The contradictory forms of the three kinds of evidence included: a): independent exploration results supported testimony but contradicted observations;b): independent exploration results supported observations but contradicted testimony;c): observations supported testimony but contradicted independent exploration results.The results showed significant cumulative effect of evidence: If other evidence support was not obtained,there were very few children to infer causality from testimony or observations;if other evidence support was obtained,The number of children who inferred causality based on testimony or observations was a significant increase,but there was no significant change based independent exploration.The results showed that: a): evidence order's effect on children's causal reasoning was a recency effect.But it was unstable and easy to disappear due to the interference of other independent variables;b): children could understand and use the information provided that they could obtain testimony' reliability and informant's credibility;reliability and summary problems motivate children to evaluate adult's self-awareness and credibility;c): children could synthesize two kinds of evidence toinfer causality under the experimental conditions of contradictory evidence.Compared with observations,children believed more in the result obtained by independent exploration.Compared with the unreliable testimony,children believed more in the reliable testimony;d):Under the contradictory conditions of three evidences,children were more likely to believe in the evidence obtained by independent exploration,and only a few children inferred causal relationships based on the testimony or observations;if other evidence was supported,The number of children Inferring causal relationships increased significantly,based on testimony or observations.Future work should focus on how children's personality traits interact with the three types of evidence in children's causal reasoning,the role of three types of evidence in the formation of hypotheses,testing hypotheses and evidence evaluation process,innovation of preschool children's scientific thinking education model,which provide theoretical and practical guidance for improving children's scientific thinking ability.