ABSTRACT
How can we explain (i) that children between the ages of two and seven years are illogical in comparison to adults, as Piaget said, and (ii) that adults are illogical, as Kahneman said, if babies are already logical? Authors, such as the American psychologist Alison Gopnik, have described scientific and logical thinking in young children, citing early statistics and even pure logical reasoning (see also the Core Knowledge Theory by Elisabeth Spelke). The author’s conclusion is that only a non-linear dynamic approach to cognitive development can resolve this paradox. It would allow us to understand better why newborns and infants who possess an early ability to reason logically (System 2) in different domains tend to reason illogically in some contexts later in life. Typically, at all ages, overcoming systematic logical errors involves the use of System 3 to inhibit intuitive heuristics (System 1), a process that is highly dependent on the maturation of the prefrontal cortex. Finally, the ability to inhibit misleading heuristics remains challenging throughout life.
