ABSTRACT
Causal reasoning is a central component in the social life of humans. Our interactions with children (as with all our social interactions) are continuously influenced by our attributions concerning the reasons why they do things, the reasons why we ourselves do things, and the reasons why shared interactive events work out as they do. We speculate about the possible causes of events that have occurred in the past, ongoing events at the present time, and possible future events. In doing so, we facilitate our ability to understand, predict, and effectively function within relationships-including parent-child relationships.
