The development of reasoning with causal conditionals

A total of 512 children in Grades 1 through 6 received a conditional infere nce task using causal conditionals (If cause P, then effect Q) and a genera tion of alternatives task. The inference task used premises for which there were fewer many possible alternative causes. Results show a steady age-rel ated increase in uncertainty responses to the two uncertain logical forms, affirmation of consequent (AC) and denial of antecedent (DA), and an increa se in production of disabling conditions for modus ponens. More uncertainty responses were produced to AC and DA with premises with many possible alte rnatives. individual differences in inference production were related to nu mbers of alternatives produced in the generation task. Results support the idea that bath developmental and individual differences in reasoning can be at least partially explained by differential access to knowledge stored in long-term memory.