Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

A large literature on the development of causal reasoningcharacterizes early childhood as a period of curiosity,exploration, and experimentation. This suggests that a noveltypreference may be a universal hallmark of early causallearning. Functionally, such a bias might serve to directattention towards new opportunities for knowledge gain. Analternative possibility is that a preference for exploring noveloutcomes develops over time. In three experiments with 2- to5-year-olds, we investigate the developmental trajectory ofchildren’s preference for causal processes that producereliable versus novel outcomes. We find evidence for adevelopmental shift between ages 2 and 3: while two-year-olds trend toward a preference for reliable over noveloutcomes, older children clearly prefer novel ones. Wediscuss possible adaptive reasons for this developmental shift.