Pragmatic Schemas and Conditional Reasoning in Children

Abstract

Solving problems involving conditional relationships has been postulated to play a central role in the development of deductive reasoning, which itself underpins much cognitive developmental theory. The traditional Piagetian and “natural logic” approaches to this topic have more recently been challenged by findings that are more readily explained in terms of the concept of pragmatic schemas. On this basis it was predicted that even young “pre-formal” children would be able to succeed in a Reduced Array Selection Task if the test statement (referring to a previously told story about bees living in a hive) was couched in such a way as to evoke an authorization or permission schema. This proved to be the case in the present study involving 54 nine- and ten-year-old children: The permission condition elicited 70% globally correct solutions, compared to the 11% elicited by the formal control condition. Moreover, this facilitatory effect of the permission condition carried over to a second trial conducted in a standard way across all the conditions.

Evidence of deontic reasoning in 3- and 4-year-old children

“…Among 4-yearolds, 85% selected the -q case in the deontic case, whereas only 35% did so in the indicative condition, a difference that was also statistically reliable [G2(1) = 11.03, p < .0 I]. These results replicate those of Girotto et al (1988) with a much younger age group, thereby indicating that children as young as 3 years of age adopt a violationdetection strategy when reasoning about deontic rules. In contrast, they do not adopt this type of strategy when reasoning about indicative rules; they adopt instead a confirmation-seeking strategy.…”

“…The methodology in this experiment replicates the crucial components of Girotto et al (1988), which is itself a modification of Wason's reduced array selection task (Johnson-Laird & Wason, 1970;Wason, 1968). In this task, reasoners are presented with a conditional rule (If <p>, then <q» in universally quantified form (All <p> are <q», and are asked to test the rule by choosing whether to examine potentially confirming instances (q) or potentially violating instances (-q).…”

“…Rather, it identifies violators who have disobeyed the rule and, presumably, will face appropriate consequences. The procedure employed is a modification ofone used by Girotto et al (1988) with 9-to 1O-year-old children. Girotto et al reported that children in this age group were more likely to adopt a violation-detection strategy when testing the rule "All buzzing bees must stay in the house" than when testing the indicative rule "All buzzing bees are in the house."…”

Inept reasoners or pragmatic virtuosos? Relevance and the deontic selection task

“…The second claim is that most individuals are better at reasoning on deontic problems (or some subclass of them) than on descriptive ones, as shown by their selection of the P and the not-Q cards in deontic versions of the task (e.g. Cheng & Holyoak, 1985;Cosmides, 1989;Girotto, Light, & Colbourn, 1988). 1 Indirect evidence for these two claims is provided by the fact that people asked to solve a series of selection tasks, some deontic, some descriptive, show no transfer from one task to the next (e.g.…”

Naive theories and causal deduction

“…By 3 years of age, they begin to display the social content effect in deductive reasoning; that is, they reason flawlessly about social rules (such as permissions and obligations) but fail miserably on formally identical problems that have nonsocial content (Cummins, 1995b;Girotto, Light, & Colbourn, 1988;Light, Girotto, & Legrenzi, 1990). The social content effect continues to appear in the naive reasoning of adults.…”