ABSTRACT
One of the most essential aspects of our understanding of the world we live in is the ability to recognize the relations between the events that we encounter. Knowledge of these relations helps us understand what made certain events happen. Perhaps more importantly, it allows us to anticipate future events and consequences of our own behaviors. This, in turn, guides our plans of action. This applies to adults as well as to children, although their understandings may be quite different. For example, one day my nephew Benjamin (at age 3) and his mother were walking when they saw a frog in the middle of the road. They stopped the traffic and Benjamin asked his mother to urge the frog to move across. When his mother told the frog to hurry, a worried Benjamin said to her: “Yes, you better tell him again because he can’t talk; he can only say ‘ribit.’ . . .” In this statement, Benjamin demonstrated knowledge of a complex set of interdependencies between events. Not only did he surmise that the frog would hurry when told to do so but he also had some (nonorthodox) ideas about a causal connection between talking ability and comprehension: It is through speech that one becomes aware of a situation. This has several consequences. On the negative side, if you cannot talk (in Benjamin’s view), you won’t be able to communicate something to yourself. On the positive side, if someone else bothers to tell you carefully, you may be fortunate and become aware of the situation. A good thing for the frog that Benjamin was there to point this out to his mother.
