Children's performance in the selection task: Plausibility and familiarity

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Abstract
Three experiments exploring the effects of the activation of pragmatic schemas on children's reasoning performance are reported. Pragmatic schemas are defined as clusters of rules concerning actions and goals. Previous results indicated that by evoking ‘permission’ and ‘obligation’ schemas it is possible to facilitate adults' performance on Wason's selection task as well as that of children in a ‘reduced’ version of the same task. Experiment 1 demonstrated that both 9‐10‐ and 14‐15‐year‐olds (n = 160) could produce a high rate of correct performance in the complete version of the task, both when phrased in terms of a familiar permission and of an explicitly rationalized non‐familiar permission. Experiment 2 (n = 40) and 3 (n = 48) demonstrated that 10‐year‐olds could solve the task even when the permission rule was not familiar and was plausible only in virtue of the availability of an implicit rationale. Developmental and general aspects of these results are briefly discussed.

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