Children's recognition of causal system categories across superficially distinct events.

A deep understanding of any phenomenon requires knowing how its causal elements are related to one another. Here, we examine whether children treat causal structure as a metric for assessing similarity across superficially distinct events. In two experiments, we presented 156 4-7-year-olds (approximately 55% of participants identified as White, 29% as multiracial, and 12% as Asian) with three-variable narratives in which story events unfold according to a causal chain or a common effect structure. We then asked children to make judgments about which stories are the most similar. In Experiment 1, we presented all events in the context of simple, illustrated stories. In Experiment 2, we removed all low-level linguistic cues that may have supported children's similarity judgments in Experiment 1 and used animated videos to support understanding of the causal elements in each story. Results indicated a gradual shift between 4 and 7 years in children's use of causal structure as a metric of similarity between narratives: While we found that children as young as five were capable of correctly representing the causal structure of each story individually, only 6- and 7-year-olds relied on shared causal structure across stories when making similarity judgments. We discuss these findings in light of children's developing causal and abstract reasoning and propose directions for future work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Children Treat Grammatical Errors Differently for Native and Non-Native Speakers.

Both children and adults demonstrate biases against non-native speakers. However, in some situations, adults act more generously towards non-native speakers than towards native speakers. In particular, adults judge errors from non-native speakers less harshly, presumably because they expect such errors. In the present study, we asked whether 5-6-year-old children place less weight on errors from speakers with a foreign accent. In Experiment 1, 5- and 6-year-old children (N = 80) listened to pairs of either native or foreign-accented speakers (between-subjects) label objects. For native speaker pairings, children preferred information provided by grammatical speakers over information from speakers who made subject-verb agreement errors. In contrast, children chose between foreign-accented speakers at chance. In Experiment 2 (N = 40), children preferred information from grammatical foreign-accented speakers over information from foreign-accented speakers who produced word-order violations. These findings constitute the first demonstration that children treat speech errors differently based on a speaker's language background.

Design Drives Discovery in Causal Learning.

We assessed whether an artifact's design can facilitate recognition of abstract causal rules. In Experiment 1, 152 three-year-olds were presented with evidence consistent with a relational rule (i.e., pairs of same or different blocks activated a machine) using two differently designed machines. In the standard-design condition, blocks were placed on top of the machine; in the relational-design condition, blocks were placed into openings on either side. In Experiment 2, we assessed whether this design cue could facilitate adults' (N = 102) inference of a distinct conjunctive cause (i.e., that two blocks together activate the machine). Results of both experiments demonstrated that causal inference is sensitive to an artifact's design: Participants in the relational-design conditions were more likely to infer rules that were a priori unlikely. Our findings suggest that reasoning failures may result from difficulty generating the relevant rules as cognitive hypotheses but that artifact design aids causal inference. These findings have clear implications for creating intuitive learning environments.

Real-World EQ5D Health Utility Scores for Patients With Metastatic Lung Cancer by Molecular Alteration and Response to Therapy.

INTRODUCTION: Economic analyses of upcoming treatments for lung cancer benefit from real-world health utility scores (HUSs) in an era of targeted therapy. METHODS: A longitudinal cohort study at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre evaluated 1571 EQ5D-3L-derived HUSs in 475 outpatients with metastatic lung cancer across various disease states. Patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) (n = 183) and anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) (n = 38) driver alterations were enriched through targeted enrolment; patients with wild-type non-small-cell lung cancer (WT NSCLC) (n = 224) and small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) (n = 30) were sampled randomly. RESULTS: For patients stable on most appropriate treatment, the mean HUSs were 0.81 and 0.82 in patients receiving EGFR and ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) respectively (with similar HUSs across agents), which were higher than patients with WT NSCLC (0.78; P = .04) and SCLC receiving chemotherapy (0.72; P = .06). In mutation-specific comparisons, disease stability on appropriate therapy resulted in significantly higher mean HUSs (P < .002-.02) than when disease was progressing (mean HUS: EGFR, 0.70; ALK, 0.69; WT NSCLC, 0.66; SCLC, 0.52). When evaluating treatment-related toxicities, significant inverse relationships were observed between HUS and the severity of fatigue and decreased appetite in the EGFR group. There was also a significant inverse relationship between the total number of clinically significant symptoms and HUS, both in patients who were EGFR-mutated and patients with WT NSCLC. CONCLUSIONS: In a North American setting, HUSs generated from patients with metastatic lung cancer are higher in treated, stable patients carrying driver mutations. This is partially explainable by treatment toxicity and patient symptom differences. Such differences in scores should be considered in economic analyses.