Class-Inclusion Developmental Levels and Logical Necessity

Cormier, Pierre; Dagenais, Yvon

doi:10.1177/016502548300600101

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Campbell & Bickhard, 1986). It is not merely the case that the membership of a superordinate class which includes two non-empty subordinate classes is greater than that of one of its subordinate classes; rather, this has to be the case (Cormier & Dagenais, 1983).…”

Section: Causal Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judgements and justifications: Criteria for the attribution of children's knowledge in Piagetian research

Smith

1992

British J of Dev Psycho

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In empirical research, developmentalists attribute knowledge to children on the basis of performances on assessment tasks. Since knowledge is not itself observable, criteria are needed for reasonable decisions to be made about how to classify different intellectual states, such as false belief, empirically true belief, necessary knowledge. In Piagetian research, there are two distinct views about the selection of such ‘response criteria’. One view states that knowledge can be attributed on the basis of children's judgements‐alone (J‐view). A contrary view states that such attribution requires children to justify their judgements (JJ‐view). An objection to the J‐view is discussed by consideration of the two dominant philosophical accounts as to the nature of knowledge, namely the foundationalist and causal accounts. It is argued, firstly, that the foundationalist account requires the elimination of the J‐view with which it is incompatible through its failure to deal with cases of knowledge at all. It is argued, secondly, that the causal account places a limitation on the J‐view which fails to deal with cases of necessary knowledge. Since one of the main problems in Piagetian research is the construction of necessary knowledge, only the JJ‐view should be used when this problem is addressed. Developmental research which is based on the J‐view alone could not, without circularity, be concerned with the substantive issues which are outside its conceptual scope.

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Section: Causal Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judgements and justifications: Criteria for the attribution of children's knowledge in Piagetian research

Smith

1992

British J of Dev Psycho

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“…Another difference between the tasks that can account for their differential sensitivity to the hierarchical level is their demand in terms of logical competencies. The qualitative inferences on asymmetry require the child to reason about the necessity of her conclusions while, for many researchers (Barouillet, 1989, 1992; Bideaud & Lautrey, 1983; Campbell & Jantzen, 1994; Cormier & Dagenais, 1983; Voelin, 1976), the standard quantification question does not. To correctly answer If a dax is an animal, is a dax a Dalmatian?…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of hierarchical levels of categories on children's deductive inferences about inclusion

Deneault

Ricard

2005

International Journal of Psychology

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Although the hierarchical levels of categories have been recognized as a major factor of variation in categorical reasoning, few studies have examined its effect on the understanding of inclusion. This issue was approached by varying the levels (subordinate, basic, and superordinate) of categories involved in inference tasks assessing 5‐, 7‐, and 9‐year‐old children's understanding of transitivity and asymmetry of inclusive relations in the dog hierarchy. Children were administered both a qualitative inference task and a quantitative class‐inclusion task, each presenting different hierarchical levels. Results showed that the ability to make qualitative inferences assessing transitivity varied with age. Although children of all ages demonstrated a high rate of success at these inference questions, 7‐ and 9‐year‐olds had better performance than 5‐year‐olds, suggesting that the capacity to understand the transitivity of inclusive relations still develops until at least 7 years. However, the hierarchical levels of categories had no effect on children's performance either in qualitative inferences requiring transitivity understanding or in class‐inclusion problems. In contrast, for qualitative inferences assessing asymmetry, children's performance varied with the hierarchical level of the categories involved. Inferring from a superordinate to a basic level category, inferring from a superordinate to a subordinate level category, and inferring from a basic to a subordinate level category appeared as three levels of increasing difficulty. Our analyses also revealed that 7‐year‐olds were better at grasping the asymmetry in the superordinate‐to‐basic relation than in any other relation between categories of different hierarchical levels, and that their 9‐year‐old peers mastered the asymmetric nature of inclusion in both superordinate‐to‐basic and superordinate‐to‐subordinate relations. This might indicate that the different levels of difficulty observed are developmentally grounded. Though exploratory, these findings help to clarify the steps through which the child comes to grasp the difficult concepts of inclusion and asymmetry and give some indications on the possible constraints that may affect their acquisition.

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“…The elementary arithmetic skills are already an objective of the past (even in case they are not actually attained); their mastery cannot constitute an achievement worth demonstrating to the experimenter. But what is currently emerging is metacognition in the linguistic domain (Gombert 1992 ) and the logical domain (Moshman 1990 ; in particular, logical necessity: Cormier and Dagenais 1983 ; Miller et al 2000 ). Significantly, it is from about 8 years onwards that children start to understand riddles based on semantic ambiguity (Bernstein 1986 ; Kilcher 1991 ; Shultz 1974 ; Shultz and Horibe 1974 ; Sutton-Smith 1976 ) and about the same age that they start to offer a majority of metalinguistic explanations in response to requests to explain the use of linguistic items (Karmiloff-Smith 1986 ).…”

Section: The Pragmatic Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

The class inclusion question: a case study in applying pragmatics to the experimental study of cognition

Politzer

2016

SpringerPlus

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For more than 70 years, Piaget’s class-inclusion task (given, e.g., five asters and three tulips, the child is asked whether “there are more asters or more flowers”) has been the object of experimental investigation. Inclusion is of considerable importance for cognitive science as it is a key concept for logical operations and knowledge representation. It is shown that the question can be characterised by a kind of privative ambiguity which is at the source of the younger children’s answer, “more asters”. A relevance-theoretic explanation of children’s interpretation of the question and of the subsequent responses is expounded. This account can explain the effect of all the factors that are known to influence performance (e.g., role of collections, counting, typicality, qualification, syntax, etc.), a review of which is presented. It is further tested experimentally. The development of performance is explained on the basis of the way children disambiguate the question. This study exemplifies the two ways in which pragmatic analysis is pertinent to the study of children’s (as well as adults’) reasoning and judgement, namely in explaining and predicting participants’ comprehension of the statements and questions, and in taking into account attribution processes that occur in the experimental setting.

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Class-Inclusion Developmental Levels and Logical Necessity

Cited by 10 publications

References 3 publications

Judgements and justifications: Criteria for the attribution of children's knowledge in Piagetian research

Judgements and justifications: Criteria for the attribution of children's knowledge in Piagetian research

The effect of hierarchical levels of categories on children's deductive inferences about inclusion

The class inclusion question: a case study in applying pragmatics to the experimental study of cognition

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