Investigating Pre-School Children's Ability to Formulate Logical Arguments

Abstract

This paper attempts to investigate five and six-year old children's ability to formulate logical reasoning. More specifically, our interest focuses on the investigation of young children's ability to use arguments based on logical reasoning. Can pre-school children build arguments based on logical reasoning such as deductive reasoning, or forms of indirect reasoning? Can teaching contribute to the development of you children's ability to manipulate logical reasoning in the forms previously mentioned? These are the basic questions we attempt to answer in this paper.

Thirteen pre-school children participated in the study. The children were involved in organized dialogues in order to investigate their ability to build logical argumentation. Our findings showed that the children had the ability to use arguments with structures, resembling reasoning found in formal logic such as deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, as well as reasoning based on the law of excluded middle.