CHILDRENS REASONING ON CONDITIONAL PROMISES AND PERMISSIONS

The responses of seventy-two 12-year-old children to a selection and evaluation task were compared in four conditions involving different social rules. The results show that the children's strategies in searching for possible violators depend on the type fo the rule being tested (e.g., permission vs. promise), and in the knowledge of the goals of the possible violator (e.g., selfish vs nepotistic). It is concluded that selection and evaluation performance which could be judged as corret according to a logical criterion are due neither to the use of falsificatin strategies, nor to a generic facilitating social context effect. The role of pragmatic factors in children's deductive reasoning is discussed in relation to the adult literature on the topic. © 1990.