LANGUAGE AND OPERATIONS IN CHILDRENS CLASS INCLUSION REASONING - THE OPERATIONAL SEMANTIC THEORY OF REASONING

In this article we critique two prominent theories of reasoning-mental logic and mental models-and argue that reasoning does not consist of either applying logical rules or constructing mental models. Instead, we propose an operational semantic theory of reasoning, according to w hich reasoning is based on children's operational understanding of key terms in a given problem. We then go on to consider an important rece nt developmental theory of reasoning, fuzzy-trace theory. In order to illustrate the view of reasoning proposed here we report a study of cl ass inclusion. Dramatic differences in class inclusion performance wer e found as the result of linguistic context; performance was significa ntly higher when an explicit request for a subclass comparison precede d the class inclusion question as compared to a standard condition whe n the class inclusion question alone was asked. This was the case, how ever, only when the prior subclass comparison question referred to the same dimensions as the class inclusion question and not when irreleva nt subclasses were referred to. Children's performance was also better when they sorted the materials into the supraordinate class as compar ed to the subclasses, but not when the experimenter sorted them for th e child. These effects due to the operational and linguistic manipulat ions are discussed in terms of a general operational semantic theory o f reasoning. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.