Development of Cognitive Flexibility and Epistemological Understanding in Argumentation

Abstract

Around the age of 4 years, children master basic cognitive flexibility tasks, such as switching dimensions or providing alternative names for an object. This ability is closely related to the mastery of a social perspective-taking task, the false belief task. Perner, Lang, and Kloo (Child Dev, 73:752–767, 2002) propose that a common understanding of perspective underlies the mastery of these superficially quite different tasks. In this chapter, we investigate whether a developmental relation between the ability to entertain alternative representations, and the ability to distinguish between true and false representations, can also be found with respect to more complex forms of perspective taking, such as thinking about alternative causal theories. We argue that previous analyses of cognitive abilities involved in the coordination of theories and evidence in terms of epistemological stances conflict with recent findings on children’s theory of mind. We introduce a framework for analyzing levels of theory–evidence differentiation and apply this system to data from a study of 6- and 11-year-old children’s skills of argument. The findings indicate that the ability to conceive of alternatives to one’s own intuitive theory developmentally precedes an understanding of evidence relevant to evaluating such theories. Thus, advanced forms of thinking of alternatives or perspective taking emerge in middle childhood, as predicted from theory of mind research. Issues for future research and implications for education are discussed.

Appendix

Table 8.1 Levels of theory evidence differentiation

Table 8.2 Frequencies of responses coded on each level on the item “prompted evidence” and in the generation of alternative theories in percent

Table 8.3 Questions of the interview