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The effects of a fantasy context, an obligation schema, and a rationale on children's conditional reasoning
Author(s) -
Seier Wendy L.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
british journal of developmental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.062
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 2044-835X
pISSN - 0261-510X
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-835x.1994.tb00652.x
Subject(s) - fantasy , schema (genetic algorithms) , psychology , obligation , context (archaeology) , social psychology , cognitive psychology , context effect , comprehension , developmental psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science , linguistics , paleontology , machine learning , political science , word (group theory) , law , biology , programming language , philosophy
Recent studies have shown that under certain circumstances, pre‐formal operational children can solve conditional reasoning problems that require looking for potentially falsifying cases. The present study teased apart the influences of fantasy context, an obligation rule, and a rationale, which typically were confounded in previous research. Subjects were 165 10‐ and 11‐year‐olds, who were asked to solve a modified version of Wason's selection task. Conditions differed with respect to the context supplied in the problem. Significantly more children in the fantasy than the non‐fantasy conditions gave correct anticipatory responses, gave correct global solutions, and were able to solve the problem quickly. Neither an obligation rule nor a rationale had any significant effect, unless presented in conjunction with a fantasy context. Results are discussed in terms of the important role of fantasy in discouraging reliance on empirical knowledge in reasoning about conditionals.