Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T12:09:25.116Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Are counterfactuals in and about time?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2019

Sarah Ruth Beck
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, BirminghamB15 2TT, United Kingdom. s.r.beck@bham.ac.ukwww.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/psychology/beck-sarah.aspx
Eva Rafetseder
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, StirlingFK9 4LA, Scotland, United Kingdom. eva.rafetseder@stir.ac.ukhttps://www.stir.ac.uk/people/257482

Abstract

We discuss whether the two systems approach can advance understanding of children's developing counterfactual thinking. We argue that types of counterfactual thinking that are acquired early in development could be handled by the temporal updating system, whereas those that emerge in middle childhood require thinking about specific events in time.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beck, S. R. (2015a). Counterfactuals matter: A reply to Weisberg & Gopnik. Cognitive Science 40:260–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beck, S. R. (2015b). Why what is counterfactual really matters: A response to Weisberg & Gopnik. Cognitive Science 40:253–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beck, S. R., Robinson, E. J., Carroll, D. J. & Apperly, I. A. (2006) Children's thinking about counterfactuals and future hypotheticals as possibilities. Child Development 77(2):413–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Buchsbaum, D., Bridgers, S., Weisberg, D. S. & Gopnik, A. (2012) The power of possibility: Causal learning, counterfactual reasoning, and pretend play. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B Biological Sciences 37:2202–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCormack, T., Ho, M., Gribben, C., O'Connor, E. & Hoerl, C. (2018) The development of counterfactual reasoning about doubly-determined events. Cognitive Development 45:19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyhout, A. & Ganea, P. A. (2018) Mature counterfactual reasoning in 4- and 5-year-olds. Cognition 183:5766.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Perner, J. & Rafetseder, E. (2011) Counterfactual and other forms of conditional reasoning: Children lost in the nearest possible world. In: Understanding Counterfactuals, Understanding Causation, ed. Hoerl, C., McCormack, T., & Beck, S. R., pp. 90109. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Riggs, K. J. & Peterson, D. M. (2000) Counterfactual thinking in preschool children: Mental state and causal inferences. In: Children's reasoning and the mind, ed. Mitchell, P. & Riggs, K. J., pp. 8799. Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Robinson, E. J. & Beck, S. (2000) What is difficult about counterfactual reasoning? In: Children's reasoning and the mind, ed. Mitchell, P. & Riggs, K. J., pp. 101–19. Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Weisberg, D. S. & Gopnik, A. (2013) Pretence, counterfactuals, and Bayesian causal models: Why what is not real really matters. Cognitive Science 37:1368–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weisberg, D. S. & Gopnik, A. (2015) Which counterfactuals matter? A response to Beck. Cognitive Science 40:257–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar