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  • How children map causal verbs to different causes across development. Nature human behaviour Rose, D., Zhang, S., Nichols, S., Markman, E. M., Gerstenberg, T. 2025

    Abstract

    Although collision-like causes are fundamental in philosophical and psychological theories of causation, humans conceptualize many events as causes that lack direct contact. Here we argue that how people think and talk about different causes is deeply connected, and investigate how children learn this mapping. If Andy hits Suzy with his bike, Suzy falls into a fence and it breaks, Andy 'caused' the fence to break but Suzy 'broke' it. If Suzy forgets sunscreen and gets sunburned, the absence of sunscreen 'caused' Suzy's sunburn, but the sun 'burned' her skin. We tested 691 children and 270 adults. Four-year-old children mapped 'caused' to distal causes and 'broke' to proximal causes (Experiment 1). Although 4-year-old children did not map 'caused' to absences until later (Experiment 2), they already referred to absences when asked 'why' an outcome occurred (Experiment 3). Our findings highlight the role of semantics and pragmatics in developing these mappings.

    View details for DOI 10.1038/s41562-025-02345-9

    View details for PubMedID 41350417

  • From artifacts to human lives: Investigating the domain-generality of judgments about purposes. Journal of experimental psychology. General Prinzing, M., Rose, D., Zhang, S., Tu, E., Concha, A., Rea, M., Schaffer, J., Gerstenberg, T., Knobe, J. 2025

    Abstract

    People attribute purposes in both mundane and profound ways-such as when thinking about the purpose of a knife and the purpose of a life. In three studies (total N = 13,720 observations from N = 3,430 participants), we tested whether these seemingly very different forms of purpose attributions might actually involve the same cognitive processes. We examined the impacts of four factors on purpose attributions in six domains (artifacts, social institutions, animals, body parts, sacred objects, and human lives). Study 1 manipulated what items in each domain were originally created for (original design) and how people currently use them (present practice). Study 2 manipulated whether items are good at achieving a goal (effectiveness) and whether the goal itself is good (morality). We found effects of each factor in every domain. However, whereas morality and effectiveness had remarkably similar effects across domains, the effects of original design and present practice differed substantially. Finally, Study 3 revealed that, within domains, the effects of original design and present practice depend on which entities design and use items. These results reveal striking similarities in purpose attributions across domains and suggest that certain entities are treated as authorities over the purposes of particular items. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

    View details for DOI 10.1037/xge0001709

    View details for PubMedID 39804379

  • Cause and burn. Cognition Rose, D., Sievers, E., Nichols, S. 2020: 104517

    View details for DOI 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104517

    View details for PubMedID 33309004