Abstract
Purpose and Methods: This is the 2nd report of the study on the development of children's understanding of causal relations. We used for subjects 10 boys and 10 girls each from the ages of 5 to 9, and 6 boys and 5 girls of the age 4 in Kakogawa City.(total: 111 children)
We selected two series of questions related to natural phenomena. One series is of 6 questions with demonstrable experiments, and the other is of 5 questions without demonstrable experiments.
To get exact answers, we interviewed the subjects individually and gave orally these question series.
Results: 1) Children are more or less than 4 years old when they linguistically understand “causal relation” in a certain form. They establish their “sensory understanding” at the ages of 5 to 7, and it is developed into “concrete understanding” when they reach the ages of 8 or 9.
2) This stage, however, never responds to a certain definite age, nor is it distinctively different from the preceding stage. Types of explanations are greatly different according to the contents of the questions; and the stages are divided merely by the periods of age in which certain characteristics are comparatively remarkable. Furthermore, causal thinking can never be decided as a monotonous, continuous value of a unique function.
3) Children's explanations are different according to the contents of the questions. When they are asked questions without demonstrable experiments, non-materialistic explanations seem to appear more frequently; although, their explanations are natural and materialistic through the two series of questions. When asked questions with demonstrable experiments, logical explanations seem to appear more.
4) Generally speaking, girls are inferior to boys. It is especially remerkable in the series of questions with demonstrable experiments, and is also notable when they reach the ages of 8 or 9.
