One of the goals of education, if not the goal, is the building of the child's cognitive structure (Ausubel, 1965). The height of cognitive structure according to Piaget (Inhelder and Piaget, 1958) is hypothetical-deductive thought, whereby the child is liberated from (1) his own perception of the real world and (2) the actual real world which surrounds him in order that he may then deal with (3) the concept of many possible worlds.Suppes (1964,1965) writes of a study performed by Hill (1960) which provided evidence, "contrary to that given by Piaget and Inhelder/' that children of age six, seven, and eight "are able to deal very effectively with verbal premises that call for hypothetical reasoning and are by no means limited to 'concrete' operations." (Suppes and Binford, 1965). If this were so, it would have profound implications for one's theory of cognitive development, not to mention one's approach to educational policies.
THE HILL STUDYIn order to measure logical ability in children, Hill constructed a loo-item test involving three broad categories in elementary logic: sentential logic, classical syllogism, and logic of quantification. The test included questions such as the following:
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