As adults, we readily compare between alternative courses of action (e.g., “Good thing I cycled to work, or I would’ve been caught in traffic”). The ability to compare the way things are to the way they could have been, termed counterfactual thinking, helps us to make better judgments and decisions. We know from past research that children are able to think about counterfactual alternatives around the age of 4 or 5, but we do not know whether thinking of counterfactuals influences the judgments and decisions they make. In this study, being conducted by Dr Angela Nyhout and MSc student Zeynep Genc, children aged 4-6 years are invited to talk to Zeynep on Zoom. She will show them some short scenarios in which a character has an experience and then learns that their experience could have been better or worse. We are interested in whether children’s judgments and decisions are influenced by the quality of the alternative (better or worse). We are looking for children who only hear English at least 50% of the time, who are aged between 4 and 6 years, and who have never been referred for speech, language, hearing, attentional or other developmental difficulties. If you are interested, please email child@kent.ac.uk with the subject-line ‘Counterfactuals Study’ and we will send more detailed information, following which you can decide to participate on a day / time which is convenient for you.