Children’s sensitivity to circular explanations

Baum, Laura A.; Danovitch, Judith H.; Keil, Frank C.

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2007.10.007

Cited by 57 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Children and adolescents possess other valuable argumentive skills. For example, 6--year--olds are sensitive to circular arguments (Baum, Danovitch, & Keil, 2007). High school students are able to spot all sorts of fallacies (Klaczynski, 1997;Neuman, 2003;Neuman, Weinstock, & Glasner, 2006;Weinstock, Neuman, & Tabak, 2004).…”

Section: Understanding and Evaluating Argumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reasoning serves argumentation in children

Mercier

2011

Cognitive Development

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The argumentative theory of reasoning (Mercier & Sperber, in press-c) claims that reasoning evolved for argumentation: to find and evaluate arguments in dialogic contexts. The theory has drawn most of its supportive evidence from work with adults, leaving open the possibility that argumentive features of reasoning are in fact entirely learned. Evidence is reviewed here suggesting that the special relation between reasoning and argumentation holds at all ages. More specifically, it is argued that (a) children possess at least rudimentary argument skills, (b) they are able to reap the benefits of social reasoning from very early on, (c) confirmation bias is present as soon as they start to argue, and (d) children can be victims of the same biases that affect adults when they use reasoning in the wrong contexts. These claims strengthen the argumentative theory of reasoning and support a call for more research on the interactive features of reasoning in both adults and children. AbstractThe argumentative theory of reasoning claims that reasoning evolved for argumentation: to find and evaluate arguments in dialogic contexts. The theory has drawn most of its supportive evidence from work with adults, leaving open the possibility that reasoning's argumentive features are in fact purely learnt. In this article evidence is reviewed suggesting that there is a special relation between reasoning and argumentation as soon as children start to reason. More specifically, it will be argued (i) that children possess basic argument skills, (ii) that they are able reap the benefits of group reasoning from very early on, (iii) that the confirmation bias is present as soon as they start to argue and, (iv) that children can be victims of the same biases that affect adults when they use reasoning in the wrong contexts. These results strengthen the argumentative theory of reasoning, and support a plea for more research on the interactive features of reasoning both in adults and children.

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Section: Understanding and Evaluating Argumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reasoning serves argumentation in children

Mercier

2011

Cognitive Development

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“…However, Rips claims that up until his study published in 2002 there appeared to be no prior empirical research on circular reasoning. While Rips reports on a study of young adults, later research by Baum, Danovitch, and Keil (2008) with younger students indicates that by 5 or 6 years of age children show a preference for non-circular explanations and that this appears to become robust by the time youngsters are about 10 years of age. Our intention is to contribute to this matter in the context of the teaching and learning of geometry in secondary school.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Students’ understanding of the structure of deductive proof

2016

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While proof is central to mathematics, difficulties in the teaching and learning of proof are well-recognised internationally. Within the research literature, a number of theoretical frameworks relating to the teaching of different aspects of proof and proving are evident. In our work, we are focusing on secondary school students learning the structure of deductive proofs and, in this paper, we propose a theoretical framework based on this aspect of proof education. In our framework, we capture students' understanding of the structure of deductive proofs in terms of three levels of increasing sophistication: Prestructural, Partial-structural, and Holistic-structural, with the Partial-structural level further divided into two sub-levels: Elemental and Relational. In this paper, we apply the framework to data from our classroom research in which secondary school students (aged 14) tackled a series of lessons that provided an introduction to proof problems involving congruent triangles. Using data from the transcribed lessons, we focus in particular on students who displayed the tendency to accept a proof that contained logical circularity. From the perspective of our framework, we illustrate what we argue are two independent aspects of Relational understanding of the Partial-structural level, those of universal instantiation and hypothetical syllogism, and contend that accepting logical circularity can be an indicator of lack of understanding of syllogism. These findings can inform how teaching approaches might be improved so that students develop a more secure understanding of deductive proofs and proving in geometry.

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“…Reason for exclusion Sabbagh and Baldwin (2001) Extension: Information from informants regarding their own ignorance Birch and Bloom (2002) Extension: Familiarity principle with respect to proper name referent Robinson and Whitcombe (2003) Extension: Deciding what makes an informant better informed and how this affects learning Sabbagh et al (2003) Extension: Information from informants regarding their own ignorance and confidence Freire et al (2004) Extension: Information from informants regarding their own ignorance and confidence Boseovski and Lee (2006) Extension: Information from informants about the reliability of other informants Jaswal et al (2010) Extension: Epistemic beliefs about adults vs. children Baum et al (2008) Extension: Quality of explanation Extension: Labeling vs. drawing attention Eskritt et al (2008) Extension: Relevance and quantity of information Fusaro and Harris (2008) Extension: Nonverbal information from bystanders regarding others' testimony Kushnir et al (2008) Extension: Information from informants regarding their own ignorance and confidence. Perceptual access.…”

Section: Excluded Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Parameterizing developmental changes in epistemic trust

Eaves

Shafto

2016

Psychon Bull Rev

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Children rely on others for much of what they learn, and therefore must track who to trust for information. Researchers have debated whether to interpret children's behavior as inferences about informants' knowledgeability only or as inferences about both knowledgeability and intent. We introduce a novel framework for integrating results across heterogeneous ages and methods. The framework allows application of a recent computational model to a set of results that span ages 8 months to adulthood and a variety of methods. The results show strong fits to specific findings in the literature trust, and correctly fails to fit one representative result from an adjacent literature. In the aggregate, the results show a clear development in children's reasoning about informants' intent and no appreciable changes in reasoning about informants' knowledgeability, confirming previous results. The results extend previous findings by modeling development over a much wider age range and identifying and explaining differences across methods.

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Children’s sensitivity to circular explanations

Cited by 57 publications

References 23 publications

Reasoning serves argumentation in children

Reasoning serves argumentation in children

Students’ understanding of the structure of deductive proof

Parameterizing developmental changes in epistemic trust

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