The Ghosts in the Computer: The Role of Agency and Animacy Attributions in “Ghost Controls”

Three studies evaluated the role of 4-year-old children's agency- and animacy-attributions when learning from a computerized ghost control (GC). In GCs, participants observe events occurring without an apparent agent, as if executed by a "ghost" or unobserved causal forces. Using a touch-screen, children in Experiment 1 responded to three pictures in a specific order under three learning conditions: (i) trial-and-error (Baseline), (ii) …