Children's capacity to reason about temporal and causal relations among past, present, and future events was investigated. In two studies, 4- and 6-year-olds (N=160) received structurally analogous search and planning tasks that required retrospective or prospective temporal-causal reasoning, respectively. The search task was compared with a closely matched control task that did not require temporal-causal reasoning. Results revealed that (a) both age groups solved the control task, (b) 6-year-olds mastered both retrospective and prospective tasks, and (c) 4-year-olds showed limited competence in both retrospective and prospective tasks. The current study, thus, suggests that flexible temporal-causal reasoning develops in parallel for past- and future-directed reasoning, is qualitatively different from simpler forms of temporal cognition, and develops during the late preschool years.
Keywords: Causal reasoning; Episodic foresight; Episodic memory; Mental time travel; Planning; Temporal reasoning.
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