When things go wrong, who’s to blame?

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. If you flip a light switch and nothing happens, there are a couple of possible explanations. One is that something has gone wrong in the external world - maybe the bulb has burned out. Alternatively, you may have made a mistake, perhaps flipping the wrong switch. Learning to make the distinction between our own influence and the impact of the outside world is a critical part of cognitive development. Infants can integrate prior knowledge with statistical data to make these distinctions at a very young age, according to a new study from MIT cognitive scientists Laura Schulz and Hyowon Gweon. They showed that 16-month-old infants can, based on very little information, make accurate judgments of whether a failed action is due their own mistake or to circumstances beyond their control.