We often think about the alternatives to a decision that has been made. Thinking in this way is known as counterfactual thinking, that is, thinking about what could have been had an alternative dec...

We investigated the causal responsibility attributions of adults and children to mechanical devices in the framework of the criticality-pivotality model. It establishes that, to assign responsibility, people consider how important a target is to reaching a positive outcome (criticality) and how much the target contributed to the actual outcome (pivotality). We also tested theoretical predictions about relations between the development of counterfactual thinking and assessments of pivotality. In Experiment 1, we replicated previous findings in adults using our task. In Experiment (...) 2, we administered this task and a brief counterfactual reasoning questionnaire to children aged between 8 and 13 years. Results showed that children also considered both criticality and pivotality when they attributed responsibility. However, older children were more sensitive than younger ones to pivotality. Also, we found a positive correlation between children’s pivotality judgements and a measure of counterfactual thinking. Results are discussed regarding the model’s relation to counterfactual thinking. (shrink)

What do human beings use conditional reasoning for? A psychological consequence of counterfactual conditional reasoning is emotional experience, in particular, regret and relief. Adults’ thoughts about what might have been influence their evaluations of reality. We discuss recent psychological experiments that chart the relationship between children’s ability to engage in conditional reasoning and their experience of counterfactual emotions. Relative to conditional reasoning, counterfactual emotions are late developing. This suggests that children need not only competence in conditional reasoning, but also to (...) engage in this thinking spontaneously. Developments in domain general cognitive processing (the executive functions) allow children to develop from conditional reasoning to reasoning with counterfactual content and, eventually, to experiencing counterfactual emotions. (shrink)