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As they grow, children develop the ability to integrate information across space and time. From the pragmatic reasoning skills that preschoolers show in everyday situations to the logical and mathematical reasoning abilities of ten to fourteen year olds, Susan Somerville pins down conclusions in the field of cognitive development.In a field that has seen wide swings of opinion about the reasoning ... More

As they grow, children develop the ability to integrate information across space and time. From the pragmatic reasoning skills that preschoolers show in everyday situations to the logical and mathematical reasoning abilities of ten to fourteen year olds, Susan Somerville pins down conclusions in the field of cognitive development.In a field that has seen wide swings of opinion about the reasoning skills (or lack of them) of children, Somerville shows, by integrating and assimilating research, that between the ages of two and six, children master what it means to treat perceptual or verbal information not simply as a fact or observation but as a piece of evidence bearing on an argument of some kind. A preliminary understanding of what evidence is, and of how it may be used in relation to an argument, seems to entail such skills as the consideration of possibilities and the ability to distinguish necessary from merely consistent conclusions. It is the development of these skills that Somerville carefully examines in this text.

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