Developmental change in perceived control: Recognizing noncontingency in the laboratory and perceiving it in the world.

To study developmental change in an important component of perceived control, children's contingency judgments were examined with respect to totally uncontrollable outcomes (drawing cards blindly from a shuffled deck). Kindergarteners perceived outcomes as contingent, that is, they regarded competence-related factors (age, practice, intelligence, and effort) as significantly affecting outcomes, and they interpreted extremely high or low levels of success as evidence of high or low concentration or other competencerelated attributes. By contrast, fourth graders identified the outcomes as resulting from luck and downplayed the role of competence-re lated factors. However, even fourth graders regarded such factors as somewhat relevant to outcomes, and their contingency judgments on the card task correlated .61 (p < .01) with their Just World questionnaire responses. The results suggest that illusory contingency declines with age, that even fourth graders are surprisingly susceptible to mistaken perceptions of contingency, and that their degree of susceptibility is related to their perceptions of contingency or justice in the world at large.