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.