This study examines how children integrate information about counterfactual alternatives in
making judgments. Previous research in adults had shown that they make judgments on the …

The current set of studies examined whether 8-to 11-year-olds generate counterfactuals
spontaneously and whether outcome valence and outcome expectancy affect counterfactual …

When reasoning counterfactually, we think of alternative possibilities to what we know to be
true about the world by imagining what would have happened had a situation been different …

Young children often struggle to answer the question “what would have happened?”
particularly in cases where the adult-like “correct” answer has the same outcome as the …

Substantial research with adults has characterized the contents of individuals' counterfactual
thoughts. In contrast, little is known about the types of events children invoke in their …

The objective of this study was to describe the developmental progression of counterfactual
reasoning from childhood to adulthood. In contrast to the traditional view, it was recently …

Mapping the development of children's counterfactual thinking should allow insight into this
process in adults and potentially its relation with causal understanding. In this paper we …

This study investigated at what point in development 3‐to 6‐year‐old children begin to
demonstrate counterfactual reasoning by controlling for fortuitously correct answers that …

In two studies, we investigated for the first time the content of children's counterfactual
thoughts about their own experiences. Results showed that the majority of children aged 8 …

A powerful feature of human thinking is the ability to reflect on how the world might have
otherwise been, or how it might be under different circumstances rather than how it is …