The Relationship between Physical and Social Reasoning in Adolescents

The relationship between physical reasoning and interpersonal reasoning was examined by devising group-administered written measures of interpersonal reasoning tasks (social guessing games) and giving these and standard physical reasoning tasks to 11-year-old children (N = 106). A factor analysis revealed two factors: Physical reasoning accounted for 42% of the variance, and social reasoning accounted for 17% of the variance. This supports the proposition that social reasoning is distinct from physical reasoning, but performance on all reasoning tasks may depend upon structures of both types.