Developmental changes in children's recognition of the relevance of evidence to causal explanations

Identifying relevant evidence is necessary to evaluate scientific claims. Two studies explore how children ages 7–10 (n = 98) judge the relevance of different types of observations for evaluating the accuracy of a causal explanation, and how their judgments relate to domain-specific knowledge and other cognitive characteristics. All children recognized that observations involving the same entity and same underlying causal mechanism would be helpful for evaluating a claim. However, children ages 7–8 held a more fragile understanding than children ages 9–10 that observations involving a different entity but the same causal mechanism would be more helpful than observations involving the same entity but a different causal mechanism. Controlling for age, children's biological knowledge also positively related to their recognition of the relevance of scientific evidence.