The Development of Conditional Reasoning in Young Children : How They Make Conditional Reasoning?

Conditional (if-then) reasoning is one of the key components of logical reasoning. There are many studies explaining the way that adults make conditional reasoning, but they have not shown an explicit developmental process. Markovits (1993) and Markovits & Barrouillet (2002) proposed a variant of mental models theory (Johnson-Laird, 1983) that can explain much of the empirical data of kindergarteners to adults. This model explained the development of conditional reasoning by such factors as the capacity of working memory, the range of knowledge available to a reasoner, a reasoner's ability to access this knowledge on-line. This article reviewed the conditional reasoning processes of 3- to 5 years old children explaining based on Markovits & Barrouillet's model account. It was suggested that (1) young children could make conditional reasoning (affirmation of consequent and denial of the antecedent) with familiar premises with the same processes as their model account, (2) the processes of modus pones and modus tollens on categorical conditionals with familiar premises and the process of affirmation of co nsequent on deontic conditionals are different from their model, and (3) young children make conditional reasoning with the different ways on three conditionals