Young children often struggle to answer the question "what would have happened?" particularly in cases where the adult-like "correct" answer has the same outcome as the event that actually occurred. Previous work has assumed that children fail because they cannot engage in accurate counterfactual simulations. Children have trouble considering what to change and what to keep fixed when comparing counterfactual alternatives to reality. However, most developmental studies on counterfactual reasoning have relied on binary yes/no responses to counterfactual questions about complex narratives and so have only been able to document when these failures occur but not why and how. Here, we investigate counterfactual reasoning in a domain in which specific counterfactual possibilities are very concrete: simple collision interactions. In Experiment 1, we show that 5- to 10-year-old children (recruited from schools and museums in Connecticut) succeed in making predictions but struggle to answer binary counterfactual questions. In Experiment 2, we use a multiple-choice method to allow children to select a specific counterfactual possibility. We find evidence that 4- to 6-year-old children (recruited online from across the United States) do conduct counterfactual simulations, but the counterfactual possibilities younger children consider differ from adult-like reasoning in systematic ways. Experiment 3 provides further evidence that young children engage in simulation rather than using a simpler visual matching strategy. Together, these experiments show that the developmental changes in counterfactual reasoning are not simply a matter of whether children engage in counterfactual simulation but also how they do so. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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反事实模拟的发展轨迹。

年幼的孩子常常很难回答“会发生什么？”这个问题。特别是在类似成人的“正确”答案与实际发生的事件具有相同结果的情况下。之前的研究假设儿童失败是因为他们无法进行准确的反事实模拟。在将反事实的替代方案与现实进行比较时，孩子们很难考虑要改变什么以及保持什么不变。然而，大多数关于反事实推理的发展研究都依赖于对复杂叙述的反事实问题的二元是/否回答，因此只能记录这些失败何时发生，而不能记录原因和方式。在这里，我们研究特定反事实可能性非常具体的领域中的反事实推理：简单的碰撞相互作用。在实验 1 中，我们展示了 5 到 10 岁的儿童（从康涅狄格州的学校和博物馆招募的）成功地做出了预测，但很难回答二元反事实问题。在实验2中，我们使用多项选择的方法让孩子们选择一个特定的反事实可能性。我们发现证据表明，4 到 6 岁的儿童（从美国各地在线招募）确实进行了反事实模拟，但年幼的孩子考虑的反事实可能性在系统方面与成人推理有所不同。实验 3 提供了进一步的证据，表明幼儿参与模拟而不是使用更简单的视觉匹配策略。总之，这些实验表明，反事实推理的发展变化不仅仅是儿童是否进行反事实模拟的问题，还包括他们如何进行反事实模拟的问题。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）。