著者

塚越 奈美

出版者

心理科学研究会

雑誌

心理科学 (ISSN:03883299)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.33, no.1, pp.47-60, 2012

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Ninety six-year-olds participated in an experiment for investigating the effects of factors supposed to affect young children's understanding about magical causality. The factors taken were the followings: (1) Whether or not an adult affirms the possibility that wishing brings about an object appearance in an empty box. (2) Whether or not a child watches such an event before his/her eyes. Compared among the four conditions made up of the combination of these two factors was the participants' behavior while they were left alone in a room along with their verbal responses before and after the experiment. Putting together the results from behavioral and verbal responses suggests that watching a magical event and/or perceiving an adult's affirmative attitude to it do not make children believe in an anomalous event but make them assume one possibility that such event might really happen.