Children's Differential Performance on Deductive and Inductive Syllogisms

At what age and in what ways do children distinguish deductive and inductive problems? In Experiment 1, students from kindergarten and from Grades 2, 4, and 6 were presented with deductive or inductive inference problems and asked to draw an inference and rate their confidence. By 4th grade, confide...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Developmental psychology Vol. 33; no. 1; pp. 70 - 78
Main Authors:	Galotti, Kathleen M, Komatsu, Lloyd K, Voelz, Sara
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Washington, DC American Psychological Association 01-01-1997
Subjects:	Age Differences Biological and medical sciences Child Child Development Child psychology Child, Preschool Children & youth Cognition & reasoning Cognitive Ability Cognitive Development Concept Formation Deduction Developmental psychology Differences Explanations Female Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology Human Humans Individual Differences Induction Inductive Deductive Reasoning Logic Male Pattern Recognition, Visual Problem Solving Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry Psychology. Psychophysiology Reference Values Self-Confidence Speech Perception Syllogistic reasoning Thinking Skills Young Children Human Preschool age Self evaluation Induction Deduction Cognition Preadolescent School age Confidence Reasoning Problem solving Cognitive development Performance Child Comparative study
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Summary:	At what age and in what ways do children distinguish deductive and inductive problems? In Experiment 1, students from kindergarten and from Grades 2, 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 1 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.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	0012-1649 1939-0599
DOI:	10.1037/0012-1649.33.1.70