The capacity to generate alternative ideas is more important than inhibition for logical reasoning in preschool-age children

There is little consensus about the nature of logical reasoning and, equally important, about how it develops. To address this, we looked at the early origins of deductive reasoning in preschool children. We examined the contribution of two factors to the reasoning ability of very young children: inhibitory capacity and the capacity to generate alternative ideas. In a first study, a total of 32 preschool children were all given generation, inhibition, and logical reasoning measures. Logical reasoning was measured using knowledge-based premises such as “All dogs have legs,” and two different inferences: modus ponens and affirmation of the consequent. Results revealed that correctly reasoning with both inferences is not related to the measure of inhibition, but is rather related to the capacity to generate alternative ideas. In a second study, 32 preschool children were given either the generation or the inhibition task before the logical reasoning measure. Results showed that receiving the generation task beforehand significantly improved logical reasoning compared to the inhibition task given beforehand. Overall, these results provide evidence for the greater importance of idea generation in the early development of logical reasoning.