Causal Processing: Origins and Development

This review concerns evidence on the origins and development of causal processing. Research suggests that causal processing first occurs around 3 months of age, in perception of motion continuity across two objects, as in one ball colliding with another. The temporal limit to the perception of continuity and, hence, causal relation may be set by the temporal integration function of iconic processing. Events of this kind may form the basis for the use of the cues of temporal contiguity, spatial contiguity, temporal order, and similarity in causal processing at later ages and higher levels. The same cues underlie causal processing of event relations made for functional reasons between plans or intentions and behavioral outcomes. Causal processing is probably automatic, rather than controlled, to begin with. Other suggestions for the origins of causal processing include concrete, familiar event sequences; human intended action; generative relations; and observation of regularity and covariation. Evidence suggests that each of these plays a role in the development of causal processing. Perception of generative relations may be the most basic of them, and observation of regularity and covariation is probably the last of the four, developmentally, to be used in causal processing. Very little research on the origins and development of causal processing has been done. Virtually nothing is known about how different types of causal processing may be developmentally linked or how they originate and develop. The philosopher Hume (1739/1960) remarked that such understanding as we have of causation is to us the cement of the universe. This hardly exaggerates the fundamental place that causation has in attempts to impute structure and organization