The early ontogeny of reason-giving

Abstract The key context within which preschool children learn to justify beliefs with reasons is collaborative problem-solving and decision-making with peers, including in the moral domain, in which they engage with another coequal mind in a cooperative spirit. Evidence for this proposal comes from recent studies in which children demonstrated sensitivity to the common ground assumptions they shared with their peer partners in decision-making, as well as an ability to provide reasons relevant to their shared understanding. Training studies suggest that discourse with others about reasons for beliefs provides children with the appropriate learning experiences. Internalizing this communicative process may be crucial for individual deliberative reasoning

Children’s reasoning with peers and parents about moral dilemmas

Children encounter moral norms in several different social contexts. Often it is in hierarchically structured interactions with parents or other adults, but sometimes it is in more symmetrically structured interactions with peers. Our question was whether children’s discussions of moral norms differ in these two contexts. Consequently, we had 4- and 6-year-olds (N = 72) reason about moral dilemmas with their mothers or peers. Both age groups opposed their partner’s views and explicitly justified their own views more often with peers than with mothers. Mothers adapted their discussions to the cognitive levels of their children (e.g., focused more on the abstract moral norms with 6-year-olds than with 4-year-olds), but almost always with a pedagogical intent. Our results suggest that with mothers moral judgments are experienced mostly as non-negotiable dictums, but with co-equal peers they are experienced more as personal beliefs that can be actively negotiated. <br/

Children’s meta-talk in their collaborative decision-making with peers

In collaborative decision making, children must evaluate the evidence behind their respective claims and the rationality of their respective proposals with their partners. In the main study, 5- and 7-year-old peer dyads (N = 196) were presented with a novel animal. In the key condition, children in a dyad individually received conflicting information about what the animal needs (e.g., rocks vs. sand for food) from sources that differ in reliability (with first-hand vs. indirect evidence). Dyads in both age groups were able to reliably settle on the option with the best supporting evidence. Moreover, in making their decision, children, especially 7-year-olds, engaged in various kinds of meta-talk about the evidence and its validity. In a modified version of the key condition in Study 2, 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 120) interacted with a puppet who tried to convince children to change their minds by producing meta-talk. When the puppet insisted and produced meta-talk, 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, were more likely to change their minds if their information was unreliable. These results suggest that even preschoolers can engage in collaborative reasoning successfully, but the ability to reflect on the process by stepping back to jointly examine the evidence emerges only during the early school years

Children's reasoning with peers in cooperative and competitive contexts

We report two studies that demonstrate how five- and seven-year-olds adapt their production of arguments to either a cooperative or a competitive context. Two games elicited agreements from peer dyads about placing animals on either of two halves of a playing field owned by either child. Children had to produce arguments to justify these decisions. Played in a competitive context that encouraged placing animals on one's own half, children's arguments showed a bias that was the result of withholding known arguments. In a cooperative context, children produced not only more arguments, but also more ‘two-sided’ arguments. Also, seven-year-olds demonstrated a more frequent and strategic use of arguments that specifically refuted decisions that would favour their peers. The results suggest that cooperative contexts provide a more motivating context for children to produce arguments

Preschoolers refer to direct and indirect evidence in their collaborative reasoning

Collaborative reasoning requires partners to evaluate options and the evidence for or against each option. We investigated whether preschoolers can explain why one option is best (direct reasons) and why the other option is not (indirect reasons), looking at both problems that have a correct answer and those that require choosing the better option. In Study 1, both age groups produced direct reasons equally frequently in both problems. However, 5-year-olds produced indirect reasons more often than 3-year-olds, especially when there was a correct answer. In Study 2 with a nonverbal task with a correct answer, 3-year-olds produced indirect reasons more often than in Study 1, although 5-year-olds’ indirect reasons were more efficiently stated. These results demonstrate that even 3-year-olds, and even nonverbally, can point out to a partner a fact that constitutes a reason for them to arrive at a correct joint decision

Collaborative reasoning in the context of group competition

A key skill in collaborative problem-solving is to communicate and evaluate reasons for proposals to arrive at the decision benefiting all group members. Although it is well-documented that collaborative contexts facilitate young children's reasoning, less is known about whether competition with other groups contributes to children's collaborative reasoning. We investigated whether between-group competition facilitates children's within-group collaborative reasoning, regarding their production of reasons and their use of transacts, communicative acts that operate on one another's proposals and reasoning. We presented 5- and 7-year-old peer dyads with two collaborative problem-solving tasks (decorating a zoo and a dollhouse). In one task, children competed against another group (the competitive condition); whereas in the other task, they did not (non-competitive condition). Our results suggest that children's sensitivity to group competition as reflected in their reasoning changed depending on the task. When they decorated a house, they produced more transacts in the competitive condition than in the non-competitive condition; whereas when they decorated a zoo, this pattern was reversed. Thus, our results highlight that group competition did not influence children's collaborative reasoning consistently across different contexts