ABSTRACT
Psychology.—Causality is a relationship between two elements, one of which, the cause, produces an effect on the other. In Jean Piaget’s theory, understanding causal relations is a crucial point in the development of intelligence (→COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT). The relations that interest infants first are the ones in which they are the causal agent. At the age of five months, infants have a “magical,” phenomenalistic understanding of causality. They grasp relations of succession between their own action (→ACTION) and phenomena occurring around them, and ascribe the latter to the former. After a long decentering and objectivation process, the two-year-old child has a clear grasp of causal relations.
