Abstract Autonomy is associated with a variety of cognitive, educational, and motivational benefits, but relations between autonomy and reasoning skills are less well understood. We posit individuals afforded greater autonomy are more often put into situations of having to consider multiple options, or causes, and hence will likely reason about cause and effect differently. In a multi-level study, (n = 696) we examine associations between younger (11–13 years) and older (14–19 years) adolescents’ autonomy and their performance on a multivariable causal reasoning and prediction task. Across the sample, greater autonomy was associated with more effective reasoning, with some differences between young and older adolescents. Autonomy given predicted reasoning skills in younger adolescents, whereas more autonomy desired predicted reasoning skills in older adolescents. We highlight sociocultural, individual, and developmental factors in their differing relations to autonomy and its effects on causal reasoning.

中文翻译：

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自主性可以在因果推理中发挥作用吗？

摘要 自主性与各种认知、教育和激励益处相关，但自主性与推理技能之间的关系鲜为人知。我们假设获得更大自主权的个人更经常陷入不得不考虑多种选择或原因的情况，因此可能会以不同的方式对因果进行推理。在一项多层次研究中，（n = 696）我们检查了年轻（11-13 岁）和年长（14-19 岁）青少年的自主性与他们在多变量因果推理和预测任务中的表现之间的关联。在整个样本中，更大的自主权与更有效的推理有关，年轻和年长的青少年之间存在一些差异。给予年轻青少年预测推理能力的自主性，而更大的自主性需要预测较大的青少年的推理能力。我们强调社会文化、个人和发展因素与自主性的不同关系及其对因果推理的影响。