What conditions allow toddlers to learn cause and effect relationships?
Toddlers may be able to learn two events are associated, but toddlers may not understand that they can act on objects to produce an effect. This study considered whether toddlers use cues from adults to understand cause and effect relationships. In one condition, toddlers saw a red block that appears to move by itself and touch a blue block. When the blocks touched, a toy lights up and spins. The blocks moved apart and the toy turned off. Children watched this several times, and then saw a trial where the blocks moved together, but the toy didn’t light up. We predicted children would look up to the toy, expecting it to ‘go’, indicating they’d learned that the two events were associated. Children were then handed the red block and asked to make the toy ‘go’. We predicted that toddlers in this condition would play, but would not push the blocks together – that is, despite learning the association, toddlers would not have learned the causal relationship. In other conditions, the researche
