Children’s Counterfactual Reasoning Strategy in Belief Contravening Problems

In the present study children’s counterfactual reasoning process is examined in belief contravening problems. The first part of this study uses the visual methodology created for adults by Revlin, Calvillo and Ballard (2005). By five, children display similar reasoning strategies as shown in the same task by adults. When confronted with a counterfactual assumption, children resolve the inconsistencies in their beliefs by retaining general statements (“generalist reasoning strategy”). They adopted this generalist strategy equally when the counterfactual assumption assigned new items to a category (“combining problems”) and when the assumption removed an item from its category (“rending problems”). In the second part of the study, a new visual methodology was applied that increases the similarity with the conditions in paper-pencil tasks. Children still display a generalist reasoning tendency, however remarkably less in rending problems. This is more in line with the adult’s counterfactual reasoning tendency in paper-pencil tasks.