Development of Reasoning and the Tension between Scientific and Conversational Inference

• Published in: Social development (Oxford, England) Vol. 9; no. 3; pp. 383 - 396
• Main Authors: Waters, Lorraine J., Siegal, Michael, Slaughter, Virginia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK and Boston, USA Blackwell Publishers Ltd 01.01.2000
• Subjects: Awareness; Conversation; conversational awareness; pragmatic development; Relationship; Scientific reasoning; Young children

We report two studies designed to examine the role of conversational understanding in young children’s scientific reasoning. The results indicate that performance can be influenced by the degree of specificity in questioning. Under nonspecific questioning, accurate reasoning was associated with both...