Young children's conditional reasoning on the four-cards selection task: The influence of context and experience

Abstract

This study examined young children's (N=87) development of conditional reasoning competence. Using the four-cards selection task of Harris and Nunez (1996), an age (3-, 4- and 5-year-olds) by context (deontic context whereby mother states the premise vs. descriptive context whereby the child states the premise) by task (familiar task based on a premise relating to an empirical matter for the participant vs. counterfactual task involving a counterfactual matter) factorial design (one between, two within factors) was utilized. According to the results, five-year-old children performed better than 3-year-olds, the deontic context encouraged children's performance more than the descriptive context, and the counterfactual task was more difficult than the familiar task. A significant 3-way interaction showed that 5-year-olds could succeed even on the counterfactual task if it was in the deontic context. The data suggested that a theory of deontic reasoning was more appropriate than that of pragmatic reasoning model.