Predicting elementary scientific literacy from preschoolers' causal stance, causal reasoning skills, and home science environment.

This longitudinal study followed 153 children from ages 3 (Mage = 3.41, SDage = 0.26, 53% girls, 47% boys) to 7 years (Mage = 7.92, SDage = 0.28, 54% girls, 46% boys) representative of the diverse demographics (30% Hispanic/Latino, 13% Black/African American, 11% mixed race/other, 3% Asian) of Austin, Texas, to examine the relative degree to which preschoolers' causal stance, causal reasoning skills, and home science environment predict scientific literacy through early elementary school. Together, these three predictors explained up to one third of the variance in scientific literacy across time, with causal reasoning emerging as the single most powerful and consistent predictor in multiple regression analyses. The predictive strength of causal reasoning skill increased as children aged from 3 to 5 years old and remained significant even after accounting for general cognitive ability. Causal stance and the home science environment also contributed significantly at select time points, though their effects were weaker and less consistent. Though dominance analyses generally supported the relative importance of causal reasoning, pairwise comparisons did not consistently indicate statistical differentiation from the other predictors, thereby underscoring the complementary contributions of cognitive, motivational, and environmental factors. Overall, findings suggest that although all three factors matter, early causal reasoning skills may provide a particularly strong foundation for the development of scientific literacy, highlighting the value of fostering these skills in early childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).