Development of Reasoning and the Tension between Scientific and Conversational Inference

We report two studies designed to examine the role of conversational understanding in young children’s scientific reasoning. The results indicate that performance can be influenced by the degree of specificity in questioning. Under nonspecific questioning, accurate reasoning was associated with both vocabulary comprehension and pragmatic ability whereas under specific questioning it was associated only with vocabulary comprehension. Findings are discussed in terms of the conversational knowledge that is required for success on measures of scientific reasoning

Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Cognitive science · Comprehension · Developmental psychology · Inference · Linguistics · Mathematics education · Scientific reasoning · Verbal reasoning · Vocabulary · Computer Science · Education and Critical Thinking Development · Educational Strategies and Epistemologies · Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods · Psychology · Artificial Intelligence