THE EFFECTS OF A FANTASY CONTEXT, AN OBLIGATION SCHEMA, AND A RATIONALE ON CHILDRENS CONDITIONAL REASONING

Recent studies have shown that under certain circumstances, pre-formal operational children can solve conditional reasoning problems that re quire looking for potentially falsifying cases. The present study teas ed apart the influences of fantasy context, an obligation rule, and a rationale, which typically were confounded in previous research. Subje cts 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 t he fantasy than the non-fantasy conditions gave correct anticipatory r esponses, gave correct global solutions, and were able to solve the pr oblem quickly. Neither an obligation rule nor a rationale had any sign ificant effect, unless presented in conjunction with a fantasy context . Results are discussed in terms of the important role of fantasy in d iscouraging reliance on empirical knowledge in reasoning about conditi onals.