Children's reasoning about continuous causal processes: The role of verbal and non-verbal ability

Causes produce effects via underlying mechanisms that must be inferred from observable and unobservable structures. Preschoolers show sensitivity to mechanisms in machine-like systems with perceptually distinct causes and effects, but little is known about how children extend causal reasoning to the natural continuous processes studied in elementary school science, or how other abilities impact on this.

We investigated the development of children's ability to predict, observe, and explain three causal processes, relevant to physics, biology, and chemistry, taking into account their verbal and non-verbal ability.

Children aged 5-11 years (N = 107) from London and Oxford, with wide ethnic/linguistic variation, drawn from the middle/upper socioeconomic status (SES) range.

Children were tested individually on causal tasks focused on sinking, absorption, and dissolving, using a novel approach in which they observed contrasting instances of each, to promote attention to mechanism. Further tasks assessed verbal (expressive vocabulary) and non-verbal (block design) ability.

Reports improved with age, though with differences between tasks. Even young participants gave good descriptions of what they observed. Causal explanations were more strongly related to observation than to prediction from prior knowledge, but developed more slowly. Non-verbal but not generic verbal ability predicted performance.

Reasoning about continuous processes is within the capacity of children from school entry, even using verbal reports, though they find it easier to address more rapid processes. Mechanism inference is uncommon, with non-verbal ability an important influence on progress. Our research is the first to highlight this key factor in children's progress towards thinking about scientific phenomena.