Development of young children's understanding that the recent past is causally bound to the present

The results of 6 studies (involving 304 children) suggested that 4- and 5-y ear-olds, but net 3-year-olds, understand that very recent past events dete rmine the present. In Studies 1-3, 3- and 4-year-old children were introduc ed to 2 empty hiding locations. With children's backs to these locations, a camera recorded an experimenter secretly hiding a puppet in one of them. C hildren then viewed the videotape of what had just happened, along with ano ther tape that depicted identical events except with a different child and with the puppet hidden in the other location. Only 4-year-olds were subsequ ently able to locate the puppet even though 3-year-olds remembered the cont ents of the tapes and understood the equivalence between the video events a nd the real world. In Study 4, similar effects were obtained when a verbal analog of the test was presented to 3-5-year-olds. Studies 5 and 6 showed t hat when children observed 2 events in which they had just participated, on ly 5-year-olds understood that the most recent events were relevant.