title: Blocking is sensitive to causal structure in 4-year-old and 8-year-old children.
abstract: In a contingency learning task, 4-year-old and 8-year-old children had to predict the outcome displayed on the back of a card on the basis of cues presented on the front. The task was embedded in either a causal or a merely predictive scenario. Within this task, either a forward blocking or a backward blocking procedure was implemented. Blocking occurred in the causal but not in the predictive scenario. Moreover, blocking was affected by the scenario to the same extent in both age groups. The pattern of results was similar for forward and backward blocking. These results suggest that even young children are sensitive to the causal structure of a contingency learning task and that the occurrence of blocking in such a task defies an explanation in terms of associative learning theory.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, Belgium. tom.beckers@psy.kuleuven.ac.be
authors.forename: Tom
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Beckers
authors.forename: Uschi
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Van den Broeck
authors.forename: Marij
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Renne
authors.forename: Stefaan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Vandorpe
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: De Houwer
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Eelen
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D007858:Learning