"Merds That Laugh Don't Like Mushrooms": Evidence for Deductive Reasoning

The study examines the relationship between the development of logical processes required in deductive reasoning and their ocmsions of use. Verbal syllogism problems were presented to 4to 5-year-old children. The problems were systematically varied in content (fantasy premises; premises incongruent with real-world events; premises congruent with real-world events), form, and order of presentation of problem types. Results indicate that young children are capable of making deductive inferences required in solving syllogism problems, and that these abilities are displayed in constrained conditions. The relationship of the problem content to realworld knowledge and the sequence of presentation of the problem types affected the display of logical abilities.