Counterfactual syllogistic reasoning in normal 4-year-olds, children with learning disabilities, and children with autism.

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Leevers, Hilary J. Harris, Paul L.
Copyright Year	2000
Abstract	Instruction encouraging imagery improves logical reasoning with counterfactual premises by normal preschool children. In contrast, children with autism have been reported to reason accurately with counterfactual premises in the absence of such instruction (F. J. Scott, S. Baron-Cohen, & A. M. Leslie, 1999). To investigate this pattern of findings, we compared the performance of children with autism, children with learning disabilities, and normally developing 4-year-olds, who were given reasoning problems both with and without instruction in two separate testing sessions 2 to 3 weeks apart. Overall, instruction to use imagery led to persistent logical performance. However, children with autism displayed a distinctive pattern of responding, performing around chance levels, showing a simple response bias, and rarely justifying their responses by elaborating on the premises. We propose that instruction boosts logical performance by clarifying the experimenter's intention that a false proposition be accepted as a basis for reasoning and that children with autism have difficulty grasping this intention.
Starting Page	64
Ending Page	87
Page Count	24
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://faculty.weber.edu/eamsel/Research%20Groups/Belief%20Contravening%20Reasoning/Counterfactual/Leevers%20&%20Harris%20(2000).pdf
PubMed reference number	10764526v1
Volume Number	76
Issue Number	1
Journal	Journal of experimental child psychology
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	Autistic Disorder Guided imagery Learning Disorders Reasoning - publishing subsection
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article