Broke or caused to break: How children map causal verbs to different causes across development

Although collision-like causes are fundamental in philosophical and psychological theories of causation, humans conceptualize many events as causes that lack direct contact. We argue that how people think and talk about different causes is deeply connected and investigate how children learn this mapping. If Andy hits Suzy with his bike, Suzy falls into a fence and it breaks, Andy caused the fence to break but Suzy broke it. If Suzy forgets sunscreen and gets sunburned, the absence of sunscreen caused Suzy’s sunburn, but the sun burned her skin. We tested 691 children and 150 adults. Four-year-old children mapped “caused” to distal causes and “broke” to proximal causes (Experiment 1). Though four-year-old children didn’t map “caused” to absences until later (Experiment 2), they already referred to absences when asked “why” an outcome occurred (Experiment 3). Our findings highlight the role of semantics and pragmatics in developing these mappings.