The effects of a fantasy context, an obligation schema, and a rationale on children's conditional reasoning

Abstract

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.