A Study of Children's Abilities to Reason with Basic Principles of Deductive Reasoning

A Developmental Study of Young Gifted Children's Conditional Reasoning Ability

“…Although there were no reported investigations comparing all five of the valid principles included in this study, as mentioned earlier, at least three studies were found which compared denying the consequent, Type 2, with the conditional chain, Type 5, below the fifth-grade level (i.e., Ennis & Paulus, 1965;Roberge, 1970;Ennis, 1971). All of these investigators reported that denying the consequent was easier than the conditional chain for children in their sample at the fifth-grade level or below.…”

“…A number of investigators have found affirming the antecedent to be easier than denying the consequent at various grade levels between four and twelve, which include, approximately, ages nine to seventeen (e.g., Ennis & Paulus, 1965;Gardiner, 1965;Roberge, 1970;Kodroff & Roberge, 1975;Roberge & Mason, 1978). Thus, for the young children included in this study, affirming the antecedent was hypothesized to be the easiest of the five principles.…”

“…He found that denying the consequent was easier than the conditional chain, at all three grade levels. Two other investigators (Ennis & Paulus, 1965;Roberge, 1970) also found the Type 2 principle, denying the consequent, to be easier than Type 5, conditional chain, for the fourth and fifth grade subjects of their sample. Therefore, denying the consequent was hypothesized to be easier than the conditional chain in this study with young children.…”

Characteristics of the Conditional Reasoning of Educable Retardates

“…a VD = Verbalization Deficits, MD = Memory Deficits, AE = Arbitrary Explanations, SD = Structural Deficits, CR = Conditional Reasoning, and PE = Patterned Explanations. normals (Ennis & Paulus, 1965;Gardiner, 1966;Miller, 1968;Roberge, 1970). However, it should be noted that most of the studies with normals used a paper-and-pencil test.…”

“…A number of researchers have used Piagetian tasks and the clinical method to investigate the development of the logical reasoning abilities of the retarded (Inhelder, 1968;Jackson, 1965;Lovell, Mitchell, & Everett, 1962;Stephens & McLaughlin, 1974). While these researchers have not investigated the ability of the retarded to reason with propositional (e.g., conditional) reasoning arguments, research with normal children has consistently shown that the ability to use various principles of conditional reasoning develops throughout the school years, and that school-age children have greater difficulty with invalid principles than with valid principles (Berzonsky 8c Ondrako, 1974;Ennis 8c Paulus, 1965;Gardiner, 1966;Kuhn, 1977;Miller, 1968;Roberge, 1970;Shapiro 8c O'Brien, 1970;Taplin, Staudenmayer, 8c Taddonio, 1974). In addition, arguments with conditional premises containing concrete-familiar content have generally been found to be easier than those containing abstract-symbolic content (Carroll, 1975;Gardiner, 1966;Miller, 1968;Roberge 8c Paulus, 1971).…”