Resumen de Causal Learning Across Culture and Socioeconomic Status.

Adrienne O. Wente, Katherine Kimura, Caren M. Walker, Nirajana Banerjee, María Fernández Flecha, Bridget MacDonald, Christopher Lucas, Alison Gopnik

• Extensive research has explored the ability of young children to learn about the causal structure of the world from patterns of evidence. These studies, however, have been conducted with middle-class samples from North America and Europe. In the present study, low-income Peruvian 4- and 5-year-olds and adults, low-income U.S. 4- and 5-year-olds in Head Start programs, and middle-class children from the United States participated in a causal learning task (N = 435). Consistent with previous studies, children learned both specific causal relations and more abstract causal principles across culture and socioeconomic status (SES). The Peruvian children and adults generally performed like middle-class U.S. children and adults, but the low-SES U.S. children showed some differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]