Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Toddlers, like older children and adults, can learn cause-effect relationships between a single action and its outcome.However, causality in the real-world is more complex. We investigate whether toddlers can learn, from observing an adultsdemonstration, that a sequence of two actions is causally necessary for producing an effect. In Experiment 1, toddlers andpreschoolers (N=142; ongoing) saw evidence that a 2-action sequence was necessary to make a puzzle-box dispense asticker, before trying to get stickers themselves. Preliminary results indicate that older children produce more sequencesthan younger children. Experiment 2 (N=42; ongoing) is examining whether 1- and 2-year-olds behave differently from inExperiment 1 when the demonstration provides evidence that a sequence of actions is not necessary (specifically, that thesecond action alone is causally effective). Although preliminary, our findings suggest that the ability to accurately infercausal structure from action sequence demonstrations may develop over early childhood.