"Merds that laugh don't like mushrooms": Evidence for deductive reasoning by preschoolers.

Hawkins, James A.; Pea, Roy; Glick, Joseph; Scribner, Sylvia

doi:10.1037/0012-1649.20.4.584

Cited by 140 publications

(129 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Indeed, within a Piagetian framework, the ability to draw deductive inferences is seen as requiring (at a minimum) concrete operations (Gellatly, 1987). Thus, a study by Hawkins et al (1984) produced some very surprising results. Hawkins et al (1984) gave 4-and 5-year-old children a number of verbal syllogisms (e.g., "Pogs wear blue boots.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…''); and others, called fantasy problems, contained premises describing mythical creatures foreign to practical knowledge, as in the pogs example above. Hawkins et al (1984) found that children performed best on congruent problems (averaging about 94% correct responses), and worst on incongruent problems (averaging about 13% correct responses), with intermediate performance on fantasy problems (averaging 73% correct responses). Performance on the fantasy problems was taken as most indicative of reasoning ability because these problems necessarily prevented children from answering on the basis of preexisting empirical knowledge.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Moshman and Franks argue that, before age 12 years or so, children have little explicit awareness of validity, especially under less than ideal conditions. The procedures used by Hawkins et al (1984) and Harris (1988, 1990) can be described as ones that facilitate maximally children's ability to draw inferences. In contrast, the tasks used by Moshman and Franks (1986) constitute a stringent test of children's metalogical knowledge (knowledge about the nature of logic; cf.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Children's differential performance on deductive and inductive syllogisms.

Galotti¹,

Komatsu²,

Voelz³

1997

Developmental Psychology

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At what age and in what ways do children distinguish deductive and inductive problems? In Experiment 1, students from kindergarten and from Grades % 4, and 6 were presented with deductive or inductive inference problems and asked to draw an inference and rate their confidence. By 4th grade, confidence ratings for deductive problems were higher than those for inductive problems, and responses were faster for deductive than for inductive items. In Experiment 2, students from Grades 2, 3, 4, and 5 responded to the same problems used in Experiment I but were asked to provide explanations for their responses. Again, confidence was higher with deductive than with inductive problems, and latency to respond was faster for deductive than for inductive items. Further, explanations differed as a function of the type of problem. These findings help fill in gaps in the emerging picture of the development of children's reasoning skills. Recent research on children's reasoning abilities and competence has presented a fascinating but complex picture. On the one hand, accumulating evidence seems to suggest that, at least in some circumstances, even preschoolers are capable of drawing deductively valid conclusions (Dias & Harris, 1988; Hawkins, Pea, Glick, & Scribner, 1984). On the other hand, some work suggests that sophisticated mastery of deductive inference, as well as full, explicit understanding of the idea of logical necessity, does not emerge before early adolescence (Ga

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Children's differential performance on deductive and inductive syllogisms.

Galotti¹,

Komatsu²,

Voelz³

1997

Developmental Psychology

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“…Research has shown that children, even those as young as preschool age, can draw deductively valid conclusions (e.g., Dias & Harris, 1988Hawkins, Pea, Glick, & Scribner, 1984). However, other studies have found that both adults (e.g., Evans, Newstead, & Byrne, 1993;Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 1991;Newstead & Evans, 1995;Wason & Johnson-Laird, 1972;Woodworth & Sells, 1935) and children (e.g., Galotti & Komatsu, 1989;Kuhn, 1989;Markovits, 1993;Markovits, Schleifer, & Fortier, 1989;Ward & Overton, 1990) make frequent logical errors when reasoning deductively.…”

Section: Deductive Reasoningmentioning

confidence: 89%

Matching Traffic Safety Strategies to Youth Characteristics: A Literature Review of Cognitive Development

Eby¹,

Molnar²

1998

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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In an effort to reduce the high crash rate and resulting injuries of young drivers, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has sponsored research to assess the factors responsible for this heightened crash risk and to determine the implications for traffic safety programs. As part of this research, this review of research literature was conducted to determine what is known about cognitive development and information processing capabilities of youth. The goal of the project was to ascertain how traffic safety programs should be structured to match these cognitive characteristics. The review is divided into 12 sections. This literature review focuses primarily on cognitive development from about 10 to 24 years of age. The first section is about memory; that is, the processes that allow a person to retain knowledge over time. The second section, attention, discusses the factors related to the development of how people focus cognitive resources on perceptual or mental tasks, including selective, divided, and sustained attention. The third section, learning, discusses the processes by which people acquire information. The fourth section, reasoning, discusses types of reasoning and the problems young people have with this type of thinking. The fifth section, motivation, examines the factors that initiate and influence the intensity of behaviors. The sixth section, is a discussion of the development of risk perception and factors that contribute to the misperception of risk. The seventh section discusses the development of problem solving and decision making in a general way. While influenced by all other cognitive factors and their age-related limitations, general deficits of problem solving and decision making ability are discussed. The eight section, social cognition, covers those topics in the development of social cognition that are likely to have an effect on driving: attribution theory and social schemata/scripts. The ninth section, attitude formation and change, discusses several factors related to attitudes and persuasion. The tenth section examines briefly the development of verbal ability, that is, all use of language. Because many traffic safety messages and programs deal with moral issues in driving, the AcknowledgmentsThis project was sponsored by the United States Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Several individuals provided valuable insight and feedback on this literature review. A group of talented people served as subject-matter experts. This group of experts suggested literature review topics and studies, read and commented on several versions of this manuscript, and participated in a 1-day meeting to discuss the issues involved with cognitive development and traffic safety messages and programs for youth. We thank them for their generous and worthwhile efforts. The people in this group were: Allen Bard, Douglas Bierness, Jacquelynne Eccles, John Hagen, Brian Jonah, Patrick O'Malley, John Palmer, David Rosen, J. Frank Yates, and Marc Z...

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“…Available evidence does not support the view that proper deductive reasoning suddenly appears at any particular point in development. In fact, there is substantial evidence that preschool children routinely reach appropriate conclusions from various combinations of premises (Braine, 1990;Braine and Rumain, 1983;Hawkins et al, 1984;Markovits et al, 1989;Thayer & Collyer, 1978) and that even adults typically fail to reach appropriate conclusions for a variety of complex logical problems (Evans, 1982(Evans, , 1983Wason and Johnson-Laird, 1972).…”

Section: The Development Of Rationalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Rationality as a goal of education

Moshman

1990

Educ Psychol Rev

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Those who believe education should involve more than learning facts often stress either (a) development or (b) thinking skills. A focus on development as a goal of education typically entails a conception of knowledge as organismic, holistic, and internally generated. In contrast, thinking skills programs commonly assume a mechanistic, reductionist perspective in which good thinking consists of some finite number of directly teachable skills. A conception of rationality as a goal of education is proposed that incorporates the complementary strengths and avoids the limitations of the developmental and thinking skills approaches. Rationality is defined as the self-reflective, intentional, and appropriate coordination and use of genuine reasons in generating and justifying beliefs and behavior. Philosophically, rationality is a justifiable goal of education, not only because it is a means to worthwhile ends but because it is an important end in itself and because it can be promoted via non-indoctrinative means. A psychological account of progressive rationality is provided that postulates continuing multiple interactions of (a) domain-specific developmental stages, (b) the learning of specific thinking skills, and (c) content-specific knowledge. Suggestions are made for fostering rationality at various educational levels. Finally, it is argued that the proposed conception of rationality as a goal of education complements and clarifies a variety of other educational goals.

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"Merds that laugh don't like mushrooms": Evidence for deductive reasoning by preschoolers.

Cited by 140 publications

References 17 publications

Children's differential performance on deductive and inductive syllogisms.

Children's differential performance on deductive and inductive syllogisms.

Matching Traffic Safety Strategies to Youth Characteristics: A Literature Review of Cognitive Development

Rationality as a goal of education

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