Saying something “almost happened” indicates that one is considering a close counterfactual world. Previous evidence suggested that children start to consider these close counterfactuals at around 2?years of age (P. L. Harris, 1997), substantially earlier than they pass other tests of counterfactual thinking. However, this success appears to result from false positives. In Experiment 1 (N?=?41), 3- and 4-year-olds could identify a character who almost completed an action when the comparison did not complete it. However, in Experiments 1 and 2 (N?=?98), children performed poorly when the comparison character completed the action. In Experiment 3 (N?=?28), 5- and 6-year-olds consistently passed the task, indicating that they made appropriate counterfactual interpretations of the “almost” statements. This understanding of close counterfactuals proved more difficult than standard counterfactuals.
展开▼
机译：说“几乎已发生”的事件表示正在考虑一个紧密的反事实世界。先前的证据表明，儿童在大约2岁时就开始考虑这些亲密的反事实（P. L. Harris，1997），这要比通过其他反事实思维测验早得多。但是，这种成功似乎是由误报导致的。在实验1（N≥41）中，三岁和四岁的孩子可以识别出在比较未完成时几乎完成一个动作的角色。然而，在实验1和2中（N≥98），当比较角色完成动作时，儿童表现较差。在实验3中（N？=？28），5岁和6岁的孩子始终通过任务，表明他们对“差不多”的陈述做出了适当的反事实解释。与标准的反事实相比，这种对紧密的反事实的理解更加困难。
展开▼
