The Role of Familiarity in Children's Explanations of Physical Causality

BERZONSKY, MICHAEL D. The Role of Familiarity in Children's Explanations of Physical Causality. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1971, 42, 705-715. This study investigated the responses of 84 children, aged 6 years 3 months to 7 years 5 months, to questions dealing with 3 categories of physical causality and 2 causal demonstrations. The demonstrations were administered under 2 conditions-standard and an unexpected reversal phase in which results contrary to expectations occurred. The following was found: (a) Familiarity had a significant effect on children's causal reasoning (p < .01). (b) Malfunctions of objects led to significantly fewer nonnaturalistic explanations than natural functions of either familiar or remote objects (p < .01). (c) Children reverted to nonnaturalistic explanations when confronted with a reversal task in which a reasonable explanation was impossible (p < .01). The results have implications for Piaget's theory of causality and his recent explanation of divergent findings in the literature on causal reasoning.