Reasoning with counterfactuals such as “if his sister had entered silently, the child would have been awake”, requires considering what is conjectured (“his sister entered silently”) and what is the counterfactual possibility (“his sister did not enter silently”). In two experiments, we test how both adults (Study 1) and children from 8 to 12 years (Study 2) construct counterfactual possibilities about the cause of an effect (“the child was awake because…”). We test specifically whether people construct the counterfactual possibility by recovering alternatives, for example, “the alarm clock sounded” or by using the syntactic negation using propositional symbols (“his sister did not enter silently”). Moreover, as children show difficulty in thinking with abstract contents, we test whether they construct the counterfactual possibility more readily by recovering concrete alternatives (“the alarm clock sounded”) rather than abstract alternatives (“he had trouble sleeping”). Results showed that children, as well as adults, recovered the alternative as the cause of the effect rather than the negation. Moreover, children, unlike adults, created the counterfactual possibility more frequently by recovering concrete situations rather than abstract situations.

用反事实推理，例如“如果他姐姐悄悄进入，孩子会醒着”，需要考虑什么是推测（“他妹妹默默进入”）和反事实可能性是什么（“他姐姐没有悄悄进入”） . 在两个实验中，我们测试了成人（研究 1）和 8 到 12 岁的儿童（研究 2）如何构建关于影响原因的反事实可能性（“孩子醒着是因为……”）。我们特别考验人是否通过回收方案构建反可能性，例如，“闹钟响起”或使用命题符号使用语法否定（“他的妹妹也没有默默进入”）。此外，当孩子们表现出难以用抽象内容思考时，我们测试他们是否通过恢复具体的替代方案（“闹钟响了”）而不是抽象的替代方案（“他睡不好”）更容易构建反事实的可能性。结果表明，儿童和成人都将替代方案视为影响的原因而不是否定。此外，与成人不同，儿童更频繁地通过恢复具体情况而不是抽象情况来创造反事实的可能性。