ABSTRACT
Children have a great deal to learn: although in possession of two basic theories of action origination and causation, children build on these theories and, presumably, acquire a keener sense of which theory should be used to interpret which kind of behaviour. Children played a card game in which child and experimenter both turned over a playing card at the same time. Shultz and z and K. Cloghesy investigated recursive awareness of intention, that is, the child understands of others’ knowledge of the child’s intentions. Most of the research on the child’s theory of action has been driven by the intentional theory of action, as borrowed from philosophy. Children have two theories about what makes things happen: the theory of action and the theory of causation. Perhaps the least controversial evidence for beliefs about external causation of behaviour comes from studies of children’s understanding of the effects of external variables on performance.
