ABSTRACT
Investigators of conditional reasoning have come to a widely diverse set of conclusions concerning the extent to which either children or adults have an appropriate understanding of conditionals, that is, propositions of the form if P then Q. At one end of the spectrum is a leading researcher of adult reasoning, who said that “performance indicates no more than a superficial understanding of the sentence if P then Q, and little evidence of any depth of understanding” (Evans, 1982, p. 231). At the other end of the spectrum are those of us who have concluded that young children show evidence of considerable appreciation of the logic of conditionals (e.g., Dias & Harris, 1988, 1990; O’Brien, Braine, Connell, Noveck, Fisch, & Fun, 1989; see also Brainerd, 1977; Ennis, 1971, 1975, 1976; chap. 9). In between are numerous advocates of a developmental scenario in which adults and adolescents have an appropriate appreciation of conditionals (subject to some performance constraints), although children have an incomplete or insufficient understanding (e.g., Knifong, 1974; Kuhn, 1977; Markovits, 1984, 1985, 1992; Matalon, 1962; Moshman, 1979; Overton,
1990; Paris, 1973; Staudenmayer & Bourne, 1977; Taplin, Staudenmayer, & Taddonio, 1974; Ward & Overton, 1990); from this perspective, how adults understand conditionals is qualitatively different from how children understand them.
