Young children's reasoning in games of nonsocial and social logic: “Tic Tac Toe” and a “Guessing Game”

Abstract

These are the results of a developmental comparison of children's play and reasoning in games of mathematical logic (Tic Tac Toe) and social logic (a Guessing Game), exploring a distinction posed in Selman (1980). Eighty-seven children, 3- to 7-years old, played a series of each game with an experimenter and then participated in an exploratory interview. Children's sophistication in reasoning was positively related across the two games, suggesting a common three level progression from mastery of procedures to a competitive attitude to advanced strategy. At the same time, the unique demands of each game were evident in the earlier appearance of a competitive attitude in Tic Tac Toe (TTT) and in a ceiling effect found for Guessing Game (GG) performance. Curricular implications are drawn using a constructivist framework.