Exploring the Role of Analogico-Deductive Reasoning in the Balance-Beam Task

Piaget’s classic experiments enabled, among many other things, identification of the types of reasoning children use in different developmental stages. His work identified both hypothetico-deductive and analogical reasoning as strong indicators of normal development. Although examples of each can be seen early on, consistent application and control of these types of reasoning emerges somewhere between Stages III and IV. Given their importance in the developmental process, it can only help the study of cognitive development to have a deeper understanding of how these types of reasoning are carried out. We focus in this paper on ways in which they interact (we call this ADR, for analogico-deductive reasoning); specifically on the interaction of generation, development, and testing of hypotheses. We present a model and show how it can explain the reasoning processes of a Stage-III subject working on Inhelder and Piaget’s (1958) seminal balance-beam task. Analogy and Analogico-Deductive