Cause and Effect as a term is used in the fields of Speech Language Pathology and Reading Comprehension.  In Speech Language Therapies, it is considered an important pragmatic skill, or skill to support meaning and meaningful communication.  In reading, it is an important tool for making predictions, understanding text and find and using information from print. 

Cause and Effect:  The ability to recognize the relationship between two events in an environment, where event A has a causal (is the cause of, or makes a consequent event take place) relationship with event B.


 

Example:  The rat in the experiment quickly learned that when he pressed the bar (cause) the machine would present an edible reward (effect.) 

Cause and Effect in Speech Language Therapies

Children who have difficulty with language and communication need to be developing pragmatics, or the ability to share and take meaning from spoken utterances.  After a child has mastered the ability to request something they want (manding)  and the ability to name things in their environment (tacting)  they have reached the stage where language really branches out, called Intraverbals.  In order to successfully discuss and understand events in their world, children need to understand Cause and Effect. 

Sequencing pictures and sequencing puzzles can be powerful ways to teach cause and effect.  They offer rich opportunities for children to use language and talk about what they see, as well as opportunities for speech pathologists, other adults and typical peers to model "the talk."  They would accompany who, what, how an why questions as well as models.

Examples: A picture of a young boy pulling a chair to a table that has a toy car sitting on it, out of reach.

• Why is the boy pulling the chair over to the kitchen table?  (Answer:  he wants the toy on the table.)
• What will the boy need to do to get the toy?  (Answer:  he will need to climb on the chair.)
• Why does the boy want the toy?  (Answer:  He likes to play with it.)
• Who is pushing the chair?  Why is he pushing the chair? (Answer:  The boy.  He will climb on the chair to get the toy.)

Cause and Effect in Reading Comprehension

Once students have gained some mastery in decoding unfamiliar words, some fluency in reading simple sentences, he or she should be exhibiting some reading comprehension skills, including retelling and being able to find and answer content questions from the text.  Among those questions should be some cause and effect questions, that push them to think about what they have read.  Understanding how one event causes another to happen will help them with higher level thinking skills they that will be using and applying to more complex text in the future. 

Once again, pictures may be an effective tool to support success.  Showing a picture of something about to happen encourages children to use "cause and effect" to make prediction about what may happen.  Making predictions is a higher level skill which is called for in the Common Core State Standards.

Skills in understanding cause and effect are also critical for another higher level cognitive skill used in reading comprehension, the ability to make inferences.  Knowing that another event caused an event will help children expand their understanding of their world and help them infer what might have been the cause:

Examples:  A picture of a broken drinking glass and juice on the floor. 

• How did the juice get on the floor?  (ans:  Maybe a boy knocked his glass off the table.  Maybe a girl was playing and didn't see it.  Maybe the Mom had her hands full and it fell off the stack of dishes.)
• If John made this happen, how will his mother feel?  (Angry, because he was being silly.  Disgusted, because she's tired of cleaning up after her kids.)
• What should happen next?  (The boy should call  his mom to let her know there is a broken glass. The boy should wipe up the spilled juice.   The girl should find her Mom and apologize.)

Cause and effect activities and questions need to be part of all language and language development programs, so students can use this skill not only to read successfully, but also so they can use their knowledge of the world to control their world and control their own behavior.