@article {3088, title = {Eye-Tracking Causality}, journal = {Psychological Science}, volume = {73}, year = {2017}, month = {10/2017}, abstract = {

How do people make causal judgments? What role, if any, does counterfactual simulation play? Counterfactual theories of causal judgments predict that people compare what actually happened with what would have happened if the candidate cause had been absent. Process theories predict that people focus only on what actually happened, to assess the mechanism linking candidate cause and outcome. We tracked participants{\textquoteright} eye movements while they judged whether one billiard ball caused another one to go through a gate or prevented it from going through. Both participants{\textquoteright} looking patterns and their judgments demonstrated that counterfactual simulation played a critical role. Participants simulated where the target ball would have gone if the candidate cause had been removed from the scene. The more certain participants were that the outcome would have been different, the stronger the causal judgments. These results provide the first direct evidence for spontaneous counterfactual simulation in an important domain of high-level cognition.

}, keywords = {causality, counterfactuals, eye tracking, intuitive physics, mental simulation, open data, open materials}, issn = {0956-7976}, doi = {10.1177/0956797617713053}, url = {http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617713053}, author = {Tobias Gerstenberg and M.F. Peterson and Noah D. Goodman and D. A. Lagnado and Joshua B. Tenenbaum} } @article {1206, title = {Not So Innocent: Toddlers{\textquoteright} Inferences About Costs and Culpability}, journal = {Psychological Science }, volume = {26}, year = {2015}, month = {05/2015}, pages = {633-40}, abstract = {

Adults{\textquoteright} social evaluations are influenced by their perception of other people{\textquoteright}s competence and motivation: Helping when it is difficult to help is praiseworthy, and not helping when it is easy to help is reprehensible. Here, we look at whether children{\textquoteright}s social evaluations are affected by the costs that agents incur. We found that toddlers can use the time and effort associated with goal-directed actions to distinguish agents, and that children prefer agents who incur fewer costs in completing a goal. When two agents refuse to help, children retain a preference for the more competent agent but infer that the less competent agent is nicer. These results suggest that children value agents who incur fewer costs, but understand that failure to engage in a low-cost action implies a lack of motivation. We propose that a naive utility calculus underlies inferences from the costs and rewards of goal-directed action and thereby supports social cognition.

}, keywords = {cognitive development, open data, open materials, social cognition, theory of mind}, doi = {10.1177/0956797615572806}, url = {http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/04/09/0956797615572806}, author = {Julian Jara-Ettinger}, editor = {Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Laura Schulz} }