Relieved or disappointed? Children's understanding of how others feel at the cessation of events.

People's emotional states are influenced not just by events occurring in the present but also by how events have unfolded in the past and how they are likely to unfold in the future. To what extent do young children understand the ways in which past events can affect current emotions even if they are no longer ongoing? In the current study, we explored children's ability to understand how others feel at the cessation of events-as events change from being present to being past. We asked 97 4- to 6-year-olds (40.2% female) and 35 adults (54.3% female) to judge how characters felt once particular types of events had ended relative to how they felt during these events. We found that from age 4, children judged (as adults do) that the character would feel positive at the cessation of negative events-what we refer to as temporal relief. This understanding of relief occurs earlier than has been shown in previous research. However, children were less likely than adults to judge others as feeling sad at the cessation of positive events-what we refer to as temporal disappointment. Overall, our findings suggest that children not only understand that the cessation of events can affect others' emotions but also recognize that people feel differently following the cessation of positive, negative, and neutral events.

Do both anticipated relief and anticipated regret predict decisions about influenza vaccination?

OBJECTIVE: Anticipated regret has been found to predict vaccination intentions and behaviours. We examined whether anticipated relief also predicts seasonal influenza vaccination intentions and behaviour. Given claims about differences in their antecedents and function, we distinguished between counterfactual relief (relief that a worse outcome did not obtain) and temporal relief (relief that an unpleasant experience is over). DESIGN: Cross-sectional. METHODS: Unvaccinated participants (N = 295) were recruited online in November 2020. Participants completed measures of anticipated regret, anticipated counterfactual relief, and anticipated temporal relief and measures of theory of planned behaviour constructs (attitudes, norms, perceived control, and intentions). One month later, the same participants were re-surveyed and asked to report their vaccination status. RESULTS: Although all anticipated emotion measures were associated with intentions and behaviour, only anticipated counterfactual relief and regret independently predicted vaccination intentions in regression analyses. Mediation analysis showed both anticipated counterfactual relief and regret were indirectly, via intentions, associated with behaviour. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that, regardless of valence, counterfactual emotions predict vaccination intention and, indirectly, behaviour. Furthermore, participants may differ in their sensitivity to the anticipation of positive versus negative counterfactual emotions. These findings may permit more precise targeting of interventions to increase vaccine uptake.

Relief in everyday life.

Despite being implicated in a wide range of psychological and behavioral phenomena, relief remains poorly understood from the perspective of psychological science. What complicates the study of relief is that people seem to use the term to describe an emotion that occurs in two distinct situations: when an unpleasant episode is over, or upon realizing that an outcome could have been worse. This study constitutes a detailed empirical investigation of people's reports of everyday episodes of relief. A set of four studies collected a large corpus (N = 1,835) of first-person reports of real-life episodes of relief and examined people's judgments about the antecedents of relief, its relation to counterfactual thoughts, and its subsequent effects on decision making. Some participants described relief experiences that had either purely temporal or purely counterfactual precursors. Nevertheless, the findings indicated that the prototypical instance of relief appears to be one in which both these elements are present. The results also suggest that, although relief is frequently experienced in situations in which people are not responsible for the relief-inducing event, nevertheless they typically report that the experience had a positive impact on subsequent decision making. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Children's understanding of counterfactual and temporal relief in others.

Developmentalists have investigated relief as a counterfactually mediated emotion, but not relief experienced when negative events end-so-called temporal relief. This study represents the first body of work to investigate the development of children's understanding of temporal relief and compare it with their understanding of counterfactual relief. Across four experiments (407 children aged 4-11 years and 60 adults; 52% female), we examined children's ability to attribute counterfactual and temporal relief to others. In Experiment 1, 7- to 10-year-olds typically judged that two characters would feel equally happy despite avoiding or enduring an event that was unpleasant for one character. Using forced-choice procedures, Experiments 2 to 4 showed that a fledgling ability to attribute relief to others emerges at 5 to 6 years of age and that the tendency to make these attributions increases with age. The experiments in this study provide the first positive evidence in the literature as to when children can begin to attribute both counterfactual and temporal instances of relief to others. Overall, there was little evidence for separate developmental trajectories for understanding counterfactual and temporal relief, although in Experiment 4 there was an indication that, under scaffolded contexts, some children find it easier to attribute counterfactual relief rather than temporal relief to others.

Temporal Binding, Causation, and Agency: Developing a New Theoretical Framework.

In temporal binding, the temporal interval between one event and another, occurring some time later, is subjectively compressed. We discuss two ways in which temporal binding has been conceptualized. In studies showing temporal binding between a voluntary action and its causal consequences, such binding is typically interpreted as providing a measure of an implicit or pre-reflective "sense of agency." However, temporal binding has also been observed in contexts not involving voluntary action, but only the passive observation of a cause-effect sequence. In those contexts, it has been interpreted as a top-down effect on perception reflecting a belief in causality. These two views need not be in conflict with one another, if one thinks of them as concerning two separate mechanisms through which temporal binding can occur. In this paper, we explore an alternative possibility: that there is a unitary way of explaining temporal binding both within and outside the context of voluntary action as a top-down effect on perception reflecting a belief in causality. Any such explanation needs to account for ways in which agency, and factors connected with agency, has been shown to affect the strength of temporal binding. We show that principles of causal inference and causal selection already familiar from the literature on causal learning have the potential to explain why the strength of people's causal beliefs can be affected by the extent to which they are themselves actively involved in bringing about events, thus in turn affecting binding.

The developmental profile of temporal binding: From childhood to adulthood.

Temporal binding refers to a phenomenon whereby the time interval between a cause and its effect is perceived as shorter than the same interval separating two unrelated events. We examined the developmental profile of this phenomenon by comparing the performance of groups of children (aged 6-7, 7-8, and 9-10 years) and adults on a novel interval estimation task. In Experiment 1, participants made judgements about the time interval between (a) their button press and a rocket launch, and (b) a non-causal predictive signal and rocket launch. In Experiment 2, an additional causal condition was included in which participants made judgements about the interval between an experimenter's button press and the launch of a rocket. Temporal binding was demonstrated consistently and did not change in magnitude with age: estimates of delay were shorter in causal contexts for both adults and children. In addition, the magnitude of the binding effect was greater when participants themselves were the cause of an outcome compared with when they were mere spectators. This suggests that although causality underlies the binding effect, intentional action may modulate its magnitude. Again, this was true of both adults and children. Taken together, these results are the first to suggest that the binding effect is present and developmentally constant from childhood into adulthood.

Causality influences children's and adults' experience of temporal order.

Although it has long been known that time is a cue to causation, recent work with adults has demonstrated that causality can also influence the experience of time. In causal reordering (Bechlivanidis & Lagnado, 2013, 2016) adults tend to report the causally consistent order of events rather than the correct temporal order. However, the effect has yet to be demonstrated in children. Across four preregistered experiments, 4- to 10-year-old children (N = 813) and adults (N = 178) watched a 3-object Michotte-style "pseudocollision." While in the canonical version of the clip, object A collided with B, which then collided with object C (order: ABC), the pseudocollision involved the same spatial array of objects but featured object C moving before object B (order: ACB), with no collision between B and C. Participants were asked to judge the temporal order of events and whether object B collided with C. Across all age groups, participants were significantly more likely to judge that B collided with C in the 3-object pseudocollision than in a 2-object control clip (where clear causal direction was lacking), despite the spatiotemporal relations between B and C being identical in the two clips (Experiments 1-3). Collision judgments and temporal order judgments were not entirely consistent, with some participants-particularly in the younger age range-basing their temporal order judgments on spatial rather than temporal information (Experiment 4). We conclude that in both children and adults, rather than causal impressions being determined only by the basic spatial-temporal properties of object movement, schemata are used in a top-down manner when interpreting perceptual displays. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

When causality shapes the experience of time: Evidence for temporal binding in young children.

It is well established that the temporal proximity of two events is a fundamental cue to causality. Recent research with adults has shown that this relation is bidirectional: events that are believed to be causally related are perceived as occurring closer together in time-the so-called temporal binding effect. Here, we examined the developmental origins of temporal binding. Participants predicted when an event that was either caused by a button press, or preceded by a non-causal signal, would occur. We demonstrate for the first time that children as young as 4 years are susceptible to temporal binding. Binding occurred both when the button press was executed via intentional action, and when a machine caused it. These results suggest binding is a fundamental, early developing property of perception and grounded in causal knowledge. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQC_MqjxZQQ.