CHILDRENS DIFFERENTIAL PERFORMANCE ON DEDUCTIVE AND INDUCTIVE SYLLOGISMS

At what age and in what ways do children distinguish deductive and ind uctive problems? In Experiment 1, students from kindergarten and from Grades 2, 4, and 6 were presented with deductive or inductive inferenc e problems and asked to draw an inference and rate their confidence. B y 4th grade, confidence ratings for deductive problems were higher tha n those for inductive problems, and responses were faster for deductiv e than for inductive items. In Experiment 2, students from Grades 2, 3 , 4, and 5 responded to the same problems used in Experiment 1 but wer e asked to provide explanations for their responses. Again, confidence was higher with deductive than with inductive problems, and latency t o respond was faster for deductive than for inductive items. Further, explanations differed as a function of the type of problem. These find ings help fill in gaps in the emerging picture of the development of c hildren's reasoning skills.