Children's Reasoning Research Articles

Do complement clauses with first- or third-person perspective support false-belief reasoning? A training study with English-speaking 3-year-olds.

To investigate whether acquisition of the perspective-marking grammar of complement-clause constructions supports progression in children's false-belief reasoning, we conducted a training study with 76 English-speaking 3-year-olds from the North-West of England (age range: 3;0-3;10 years, 50% female, 80% White). Children were randomly assigned to one of three maximally comparable training conditions, and in a 4-week eight-session program, all children participated in the same training activities with mental-state contrasts. Depending on condition, activities were mediated linguistically with either simple clauses, first-person complements, or third-person complements. The study addressed critical confounds in previous training studies by avoiding the use of complement clauses in false-belief tests and controlling individual differences in memory, executive functioning, general language, and pretest proficiency with complement clauses. The results yielded strong support for the hypothesis of a causal influence of complement-clause exposure on false-belief progression, as children trained with first-person complements advanced significantly more in false-belief reasoning from pretest to posttest than children trained with simple clauses. Examining the roles of first- and third-person complements, a direct comparison between progression in the two complement-clause conditions showed no significant difference, but only children trained with first-person complements progressed significantly more than children in the control condition trained with simple clauses. Follow-up analyses suggested that first- and third-person complements each support false-belief progression at different stages of development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Meningkatkan Perkembangan Kognitif AUD Melalui Permainan Monoplay Box di TK Wisma Sari

One of the important aspects of development in children is cognitive development which strengthens children's reasoning, how children manage information, how children overcome curiosity, children's self-management of difficulties encountered when they want to explore their high curiosity, apart from providing knowledge about things. -things around can also help children in terms of exporting their surroundings. The aim of this research is that children can sharpen their memory, intuition, focus and be able to solve problems independently using the monoplay box game media. The qualitative method is the method used to observe the subjects studied, namely 21 Kindergarten B1 children at Wisma Sari Kindergarten Denpasar. In accumulating the data used, namely observation, interviews and checklists. The gains obtained from this research can be seen from the Pre- Simulation period, 1st period, 2nd period and 3rd period after using the Monoplay Box game in the observations that have been made, it can increase the cognitive development of the aud through the Monoplay Box game with the results experiencing a significant increase.

Transformative tales: The role of story videos on children's reasoning about transgender identities.

The current study explored whether positive contact through stories could influence how young children think about transgender identities and gender in general. A total of 174 children ages 5-6 and 9-10 were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: Jazz (participants watched a video regarding a transgender child named Jazz), Blue (participants watched a video regarding a marker that looked red on the outside but inside was really blue) and control (no video). Both videos described the main character as feeling different inside than outside, and their social transition to their preferred identity; researcher scaffolding supported the video messages. Children who viewed the Jazz video had: (a) greater understanding of transgender identities and (b) no overall differences in gender essentialism, but (c) lower gender essentialism on three specific measures (gender immutability, innate toy behaviours and innate preferences). Also, gender essentialism was lower in older versus younger children. In this study, a direct, realistic story was the only effective means of teaching children about transgender identities and reducing belief in gender immutability. Thus, stories can be a way to teach children about the social world and change essentialist beliefs, but the impact may be limited and greatly affected by features of the story.

Analisis Keterampilan Berbicara Menggunakan Buku Cerita Bergambar pada Siswa Kelas Tinggi

This research aims to describe the speaking skills of high school students using picture story books. The method used in this research is literacy or literature review by collecting data sources relevant to the topic. The results of the research show that the use of picture story books as a learning medium has a significant impact on students' speaking abilities in high grades. Telling stories using picture books in peer groups can stimulate children's reasoning. Illustrations in storybooks are more effective in helping children understand the language and how it is conveyed compared to stories that only consist of text.

"He did girls' things!" Hong Kong and Canadian children's reasoning about moral judgments of peers' gendered behaviors.

Children show less positivity toward gender-nonconforming (GN) than gender-conforming (GC) peers. Yet, little is known about children's reasoning about peers of varying gender expressions, including age-, gender-, and culture-related influences. We investigated how children aged 4- to 5- and 8- to 9-years-old in Hong Kong and Canada (N = 678) reason about their moral judgments of GC and GN peers. After viewing vignettes describing GC and GN boys and girls, we asked children whether each target peer's behavior was right or wrong and why they thought so. We coded children's reasoning using a new coding scheme developed via inductive content analysis. Overall, children's most commonly used reasoning styles were global standard, personal choice, gender stereotypes, "don't know," and others' welfare. Children used more gender stereotype-related reasoning when they were older and from Hong Kong, appraising the GN boy, or when they perceived the target's behavior as wrong. In contrast, children reasoned based on personal choice more when they were from Canada or when they perceived the target's behavior as right. These findings inform how age-, gender-, and culture-related factors are associated with children's reasoning about the acceptability or appropriateness of varying kinds of childhood gendered behavior. They provide insights regarding children's appraisals of different gender expressions by illuminating not only how they view GC and GN peers but also, from their own perspectives, why they do so. These insights have implications for strategies aimed at decreasing gender-related biases and increasing children's acceptance of gender diversity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Updating trust: How children combine trait information with prior accuracy as they interact with an informant.

When deciding whether to trust someone's claims, how do children combine-over multiple interactions-information about that person's general behavioral tendencies (traits) with that person's ongoing (and changing) rate of providing accurate claims? Children aged 4-8 played 11 rounds of a find-the-sticker game. For each round, an informant looked into two cups and made a claim about which cup held a sticker. Children guessed the sticker's location and the sticker's actual location was revealed. Prior to the game, children received information that the informant was either honest or dishonest. In Study 1 (N = 201, 105 female, 96 male), the informant provided inaccurate information on the first five trials and then provided accurate information for the remaining trials (55% overall accuracy). In Study 2 (N = 144, 89 female, 55 male), the informant produced a less predictable pattern of (in)accuracy, but remained 55% accurate overall. The trait information children initially received about the informant's honesty strongly influenced their epistemic trust when they lacked additional information about the informant's reliability (the earliest trials). When children's first-hand experiences with the informant prevented them from making strong predictions about the informant's future behavior, only children approximately 7 years and older utilized trait information to guide their epistemic trust. These results demonstrate some similarities in children's causal reasoning about the physical world and their social reasoning. The results also demonstrate developmental patterns in how children weigh different types of social information at different junctures in social interaction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The development of moral reasoning in urban, high-social class families from Gujarat, India: A longitudinal study from middle childhood to late adolescence.

The aims of the present study were to quantitatively test hypotheses based on the cultural-developmental approach among children and adolescents in Vadodara, India, and to use qualitative analyses to examine the use of indigenous moral concepts. The study included 72 participants who were interviewed at two different age points, separated by approximately 4.5 years. At Time 1, participants were in middle childhood (Mage = 8.22 years) and in early adolescence (Mage = 11.54 years). At Time 2, the same participants were in early adolescence (Mage = 12.87 years) and late adolescence (Mage = 15.77 years). Three findings stood out: (1) As expected, the degree of use of Autonomy increased over the course of adolescence, as did the types of moral concepts. (2) The degree of use of Community significantly increased from middle childhood to adolescence. Duty, within Community was evoked prominently and consistently across all age points suggesting that aspects of social membership emerge early in Indian children's moral reasoning and remain important through adolescence. (3) The use of Divinity was prominent in middle childhood and its use decreased significantly through early adolescence; with a trend for a decrease in its use from early to late adolescence. While much of the reasoning in middle childhood was dominated by a concern for Punishment Avoidance from God, by adolescence Customary Traditional Authority and God's Authority gained prominence. Findings highlight aspects of adolescent moral reasoning that are largely missing in Western studies and point to the utility of emic, indigenous approaches to study moral development.

Emotions before actions: When children see costs as causal

Adults expect people to be biased by sunk costs, but young children do not. We tested between two accounts for why children overlook the sunk cost bias. On one account, children do not see sunk costs as causal. The other account posits that children see sunk costs as causal, but unlike adults, think future actions cannot make up for sunk costs. These accounts make opposing predictions about whether children should see sunk costs as affecting emotions. Across three experiments, 4–7-year-olds (total N = 320) and adults (total N = 429) saw stories about characters who collected items that were easy or difficult to obtain, and predicted characters' emotions and actions. At all ages, participants anticipated that characters would feel sadder about high-cost objects, but only adults predicted that characters would keep high-cost objects. Our findings show that children see incurred costs as causal, and that costs are integrated children's and adults' theory of emotions. Moreover, the findings suggest that developmental differences in sunk cost reasoning may rest in children's incomplete mental accounting. We also discuss children's reasoning about rational and irrational action.

Deductive Reasoning Skills in Children Aged 4-8 Years Old.

Young children possess the fundamental deductive reasoning skills for solving their upcoming problems in their daily lives. These skills are of great importance for their school readiness and academic development. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the age differences and predictive variables of deductive reasoning skills in young Hungarian children aged 4-8 years old who reside in Hungary and Slovakia. Face-to-face data were collected from 3050 participants. The instrument of deductive reasoning skills assessment was extracted from the school readiness test, DIFER (Diagnostic System for Assessing Development). Utilizing various statistical analyses with R, AMOS, and MPlus8 packages, it was found that there were significant differences in young children's deductive reasoning skills across countries and age groups. Parents' education levels had significant positive relationships with children's deductive reasoning skills development. And the variables of country and age were identified as significant predictors of children's deductive reasoning skills. And children's family background variables such as parental education played a significant role in predicting children's deductive reasoning skills in Hungary. The implications of this study emphasize the importance of educational contexts, parental involvement, cross-cultural exchange, and further research, with the potential to enhance young children's educational experiences and prospects in Hungary, Slovakia, and beyond.

Investigating the role of spatial thinking in children’s design ideation through an open-ended design-by-analogy challenge

Spatial thinking is ubiquitous in design. Design education across all age groups encompasses a range of spatially challenging activities, such as forming and modifying mental representations of ideas, and visualizing the scenarios of design prototypes being used. While extensive research has examined the cognitive processes of spatial thinking and their relationships to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics learning, there remains a knowledge gap regarding the specific spatial thinking processes needed for open-ended problems, which may differ from those assessed in close-ended, analytical spatial tasks. To address this gap, we used educational design-based research to develop a nature-inspired, design-by-analogy project and investigate the spatial thinking processes of young, novice designers. 16 children from an international school in the Netherlands participated in this five-week design project. Multimodal evidence from classroom recordings and children’s design works were triangulated to offer insight into the key spatial thinking processes involved in their creation of nature-inspired, analogy-based design prototypes. Our results revealed spatial thinking processes that might not align with those assessed in conventional spatial tests and may be unique to design or open-ended problem-solving. These processes include abstracting spatial features to infer form-function relationships, retrieving a range of relevant visual information from memory, developing multiple possible analogical matches based on spatial features and relationships, elaborating and iterating on the design concepts and representations to make creative and suitable solutions for the design challenge, as well as visualizing design prototypes in practical usage scenarios. By highlighting the nuanced differences between spatial thinking in open-ended, divergent thinking tasks and conventional spatial tasks that demand single correct solutions, our research contributes to a deeper understanding of how children utilize spatial thinking in design and open-ended problem-solving contexts. Furthermore, this case study offers practical implications for scaffolding children's analogical reasoning and nurturing their spatial thinking in design education.

The personal epistemology of parents predicts the development of scientific reasoning in children aged 6-10 years.

The influence of the epistemological beliefs of parents on the development of comprehensive scientific reasoning abilities was investigated in a five-wave longitudinal study from kindergarten to elementary school. The 161 German 5-10-year-olds (89 girls, 72 boys) were assessed yearly on their scientific reasoning abilities using comprehensive measures for experimentation and data-interpretation skills, as well as understanding of the nature of science. The children were also tested on their language abilities and intelligence. Their parents completed a sociodemographics questionnaire and answered ten questions about their epistemological beliefs regarding (1) the interpretive nature of science, (2) the tentative nature of knowledge, and (3) the role of scientific framework theories. The personal epistemology of the parents significantly predicted the scientific reasoning development of their children regardless of the parents' education level and the children's general cognitive abilities. However, the effect of the epistemology of parents on their children's scientific reasoning was limited to the intercepts, suggesting that the epistemic understanding of parents affects how scientific reasoning develops in their children, but not the development speed. Although parental epistemology exerts substantial effects on scientific reasoning of their children, it did not affect their reading ability, suggesting an involvement of science-specific mechanisms rather than generalized family-based influences. These findings highlight the importance of family as a variable in the development of scientific reasoning, which is an area lacking in research, and it suggests that early interventions targeted at the epistemic understanding of caregivers can provide useful ways for promoting the reasoning of children. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: A five-year longitudinal study shows significant development of scientific reasoning from kindergarten to elementary school. Caregivers' personal epistemology predicted scientific reasoning development-independent of children's general cognitive abilities and caregivers' level of education. The effect was most-pronounced for caregivers' understanding that social framework theories determine which aspects of science are accepted and how they are conducted. Caregivers' personal epistemology did not predict children's reading abilities, suggesting that the effect of the caregivers' epistemology on children's scientific reasoning is domain-specific.

Executive function as a mechanism for the emergence and expression of moral knowledge.

We outline two accounts by which executive function (EF) supports children's moral reasoning: an emergence and an expression account. The emergence account postulates that EF supports the development of moral concepts because it relates to how children navigate their early social environments and how well they can internalize moral messages. The expression account postulates that EF supports children's in-the-moment moral reasoning for complex moral situations. We present data from two studies with preschool children to assess each account. In support of the emergence account, EF longitudinally and positively predicted moral reasoning, but only for children who have experienced moderate forms of peer conflict. In support of the expression account, EF was only correlated with judgments that required the coordination of multiple pieces of information (i.e., retaliation and criterion judgments). We conclude that EF is an important cognitive mechanism of moral development and discuss various implications of these findings for both moral development and EF theory.

MEASURING SCIENTIFIC REASONING OF FOURTH GRADERS: VALIDATION OF THE SCIENCE-K INVENTORY IN PAPER-BASED AND COMPUTER-BASED TESTING ENVIRONMENTS

Nowadays, the assessment of student performance has become increasingly technology-based, a trend that can also be observed in the evaluation of scientific reasoning, with more and more of the formerly paper-based assessment tools moving into the digital space. The study aimed to examine the reliability and validity of the paper-based and computer-based forms of the Science-K Inventory, which assesses children's scientific reasoning in three aspects: experimentation, data interpretation, and understanding of the nature of science. The pilot study involved 84 fourth-grade Hungarian students, with 39 students taking the paper-based test and 45 students taking the computer-based test. Rasch measurements and reliability tests have indicated that both the paper-based and computer-based test versions are equally valid for assessing the scientific reasoning skills of fourth graders. Students achieved high test scores in both mediums, and there were no significant differences between boys' and girls' scientific reasoning in either test type. The novelty of this research was that the Science-K Inventory had not yet been tested in a computer-based format. The results demonstrate that the Science-K Inventory can be effectively utilized in digital testing to provide teachers with rapid and valuable information for fostering the development of their students' scientific reasoning. Keywords: computer-based testing, paper-based testing, primary school, Science-K Inventory, scientific reasoning

Explaining and exploring the dynamics of parent-child interactions and children's causal reasoning at a children's museum exhibit.

This study examines how parents' and children's explanatory talk and exploratory behaviors support children's causal reasoning at a museum in San Jose, CA in 2017. One-hundred-nine parent-child dyads (3-6 years; 56 girls, 53 boys; 32 White, 9 Latino/Hispanic, 17 Asian-American, 17 South Asian, 1 Pacific Islander, 26 mixed ethnicity, 7 unreported) played at an air flow exhibit with a nonobvious causal mechanism. Children's causal reasoning was probed afterward. The timing of parents' explanatory talk and exploratory behaviors was related to children's systematic exploration during play. Children's exploratory behavior, and parents' goal setting during play, were related to children's subsequent causal reasoning. These findings support the hypothesis that children's exploration is related to both internal learning processes and external social scaffolding.

The non‐protesting children in the 2018 Parkland school shooting protests and their freedom not to express views in child participation spaces

AbstractUsing mixed methods, we looked into USA children's reasons behind their non‐participation in the 2018 Parkland school shooting protests from newsletters of randomly sampled 57 middle (MS) and high schools (HS) across USA. We found five themes of reasons that point to non‐protesting children's concern about protest method and issues. The MS and HS non‐protesters' concerns overlapped and differed. The reasons reveal the protests to pose adherence issues to most CRC articles on and almost all of the basic requirements of child participation. We attribute the adherence issues to problems on assigning duties in non‐adult‐provided child participation spaces like protests. To identify protest as child participation necessitate propping children's freedom of expression as the animating force behind child participation's first key element and children's right to information a prerequisite for both. In this reframing, organizing/leading children become duty‐bearers while adults primarily remain so.

“Scie-losophy” a teaching and learning framework for the reconciliation of the P4C and the scientific method

Today's students face new challenges that demand high levels of intelligence and meta-thinking skills. Science-based educational pedagogies like STEM, 5E's, and discovery-based education have earned a strong reputation for nurturing children's reasoning and critical thinking skills. However, there's a need for them to be more open and conceptual in order to better prepare students for modern life's challenges. The realms of philosophical and scientific-based educational models currently dominate the educational arena. In retrospect, both models have inherent values that would benefit learners. It is beneficial to examine both methods to develop a teaching framework that fosters higher-order thinking, metacognition, and problem-solving skills. The objective of this paper is to delve into the essenceof the philosophy for children (P4C) method in comparison with the scientific method and their impact onstudents' learning. Using the six reasoning strands, I will systematically compare the two models for strengths and similarities. Throughout this comparison, I aim to maintain objectivity by by drawing on references and practical experience, avoiding any undue bias in favor of one model over the other. Subsequently, by applyingTrompenaars Hampden-Turner™ dilemmas reconciliation model, I will propose the Scie-losophy model, which represents reconciliation between the two methods for the benefit of the learner and the greater good of society.•Currently, philosophical, and scientific-based education models dominate the educational arena. Both models have inherent values that would benefit learners.•Adopting one approach above the other will yield less than optimal results. I strongly discourage following a saturated educational system in which one of the two methods is used exclusively.•I propose a model that represents reconciliation between the two methods for the benefit of the learner and the interest of society.

Penerapan Metode Casework dalam Meneliti Perkembangan Berhitung Siswa/i di Sekolah Dasar Negeri 060894 Medan Baru

Counting is one of the basic knowledge that must be acquired by the nation's generation who are still in school. This numeracy ability is useful for training children's general reasoning in dealing with a problem and children can process information and data that exist in everyday life. there are challenges nowadays, the impact of online learning since the covid-19 pandemic has made students not understand very clearly so that the subject matter received is not optimal which results in children's numeracy skills lacking. So in this case, the purpose of writing is to increase understanding in arithmetic in order to better understand and understand the basics of mathematics for everyday life. The location of the field work practice carried out by the author is on Jl. Rebab No. 99, Titi Chain, Kec. Medan Baru, Medan City, North Sumatra. With a total of 26 students. The campus teaching activities last for 3 months. The method used in this practical is the Casework method by Zastrow. The stages in the groupwork method include (1) Engagement, Intake, Contract, (2) Assessment, (3) Planning, (4) Intervention, (5) Monitoring, (6) Evaluation, and (7) Termination. The results of this practical activity showed an increase in learning and self-confidence of children in grades VI and IV at 060894 Public Elementary School. At the beginning of the meeting, the children had difficulty. After several meetings, the children began to be more fluent and dare to appear in front of the class to solve problems and explain how to solve them and there was an increase in grades in their school assignments.

Adolescents view social exclusion based on social class as more wrong than do children.

Psychological attitudes about social status hierarchies and social mobility often reflect stereotypic expectations about competencies and entitlements based on inequalities. Children who experience exclusion based on social class are at risk of experiencing a lack of opportunities, contributing to societal disparities. Recently, developmental science has examined the origins of attitudes that contribute to social exclusion, reflecting moral judgments about fairness as well as societal and group-based concerns about norms and intergroup dynamics. This study investigated children's reasoning about intergroup exclusion by focusing on social class as a potential exclusion criterion for children and adolescents in peer contexts in Türkiye, an understudied context for research. Participants living in a metropolitan area of Türkiye (N = 270) between the ages of 8-10 (Mage = 9.80; SD = .77; 53.5% girls) and 14-16 (Mage = 15.51; SD = .93, 61.7% girls) from lower and higher socioeconomic backgrounds were asked for their exclusion evaluations, emotion attributions, related justifications, and individual solutions. While participants overall viewed social class-based social exclusion as wrong, adolescents typically viewed it as more wrong than did children. Adolescents focused on unfair treatment and discrimination, whereas children focused on interpersonal aspects of social exclusion more frequently. Older participants from lower socioeconomic status (SES) viewed the excluders' intentions as discriminatory more often than did older participants from higher SES who desired to protect the status quo. These findings shed new light on how children and adolescents evaluate societal-based biases contributing to peer social exclusion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The role of creative thinking in children's scientific reasoning

Theories advocate that creative thinking could be strengthened within the science curriculum, yet empirical evidence supporting a connection between the two remains limited. This study is one of the first to examine the predictive value of creative thinking (divergent and convergent thinking) for scientific reasoning, while taking task specificity and academic achievement into account. A path analysis based on data of 225 fifth graders revealed that verbal and visual convergent thinking positively predicted the construction of research questions and evaluation of evidence, whereas visual divergent thinking negatively predicted the construction of research questions. Mathematical ability proved of no predictive value for any of the creative thinking and scientific reasoning measures, while reading comprehension positively predicted verbal convergent thinking, the construction of research questions and evidence evaluation. This study illustrates how convergent thinking could be of particular relevance for children's scientific reasoning, and can serve as a starting point for in-depth research examining the role of creative thinking within scientific reasoning.

Children's Early Spontaneous Comparisons Predict Later Analogical Reasoning Skills: An Investigation of Parental Influence.

Laboratory studies have demonstrated beneficial effects of making comparisons on children's analogical reasoning skills. We extend this finding to an observational dataset comprising 42 children. The prevalence of specific comparisons, which identify a feature of similarity or difference, in children's spontaneous speech from 14-58 months is associated with higher scores in tests of verbal and non-verbal analogy in 6th grade. We test two pre-registered hypotheses about how parents influence children's production of specific comparisons: 1) via modelling, where parents produce specific comparisons during the sessions prior to child onset of this behaviour; 2) via responsiveness, where parents respond to their children's earliest specific comparisons in variably engaged ways. We do not find that parent modelling or responsiveness predicts children's production of specific comparisons. However, one of our pre-registered control analyses suggests that parents' global comparisons-comparisons that do not identify a specific feature of similarity or difference-may bootstrap children's later production of specific comparisons, controlling for parent IQ. We present exploratory analyses following up on this finding and suggest avenues for future confirmatory research. The results illuminate a potential route by which parents' behaviour may influence children's early spontaneous comparisons and potentially their later analogical reasoning skills.