A developmental comparison of two types of inferential reasoning problems

Abstract

An experimental paradigm was devised to extend and clarify the current literature on transitive inferential reasoning in children. Two analogous forms of reasoning problems--defined as locative sequences and serial orderings--were compared across the age levels of Kindergarten, Grade 2 and Grade 6. A two-alternative forced-choice test assessed performance on inference questions and on memory for the premises from which the inferences were drawn. There were no differences among the three age groups in inferential performance on the locative sequence problems but a marked age trend in performance on the serial ordering problems. However, a significant developmental interaction was not present in the memory question data nor in a separate memory control condition. The different developmental pattern of findings for the two problem types was explained in terms of the difficulty encountered by young children in representing a serially ordered information sequence in memory.