Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 7, 2026

The Modified Temptation Resistance Task: A Paradigm to Elicit Children's Strategic Lie-telling
Published on: April 6, 2018
Wondering how: Children's and adults' explanations for mundane, improbable, and extraordinary events
Jacqueline D Woolley1, Chelsea A Cornelius2
1Department of Psychology, The University of Texas, 1 University Station, A8000, Austin, TX, 78712, USA. woolley@austin.utexas.edu.
Abstract:
Children aged 5 through 9 years and adults judged the reality status of parallel mundane, improbable, and extraordinary events, generated an explanation for each event, and evaluated explanations purportedly generated by other participants. Participants of all ages claimed that mundane and improbable events could happen, whereas extraordinary events could not. Participants also overwhelmingly generated natural explanations for all three types of events but did so most for mundane, less for improbable, and least for extraordinary events. Supernatural explanations followed the reverse pattern, indicating that an event's possibility affects explanation. Participants also evaluated natural explanations most favorably and evaluated claims that there was no explanation for an event least favorably across all story types. However, significant rejection of the "no explanation" claim did not emerge until age 8 years, indicating that age affects acceptance of the idea that some events might be unexplainable.
More Related Videos
07:36An Experimental Analysis of Children's Ability to Provide a False Report about a Crime
Published on: May 3, 2016
05:22Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies
Published on: May 9, 2019
Related Concept Videos
Magical Thinking
Fundamental Attribution Error
Personal Choice and Fate Attributions
Cause and Effect
Extrasensory Perception
Precognition involves foreseeing future events, such as predicting an accident before it happens. An example of precognition could be someone dreaming about a specific event, like a car crash, which then occurs...
Hindsight Biases