The Development of Counterfactual Reasoning in Belief Revision

• Main Authors: Nicole Van Hoeck, Russell Revlin, Kristien Dieussaert, Walter Schaeken
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ubiquity Press 2012-12-01
• Series: Psychologica Belgica
• Online Access: http://www.psychologicabelgica.com/articles/26

<span>The present study examines how children revise beliefs in the face of a new piece of information that they must accept as true and under what circumstances their belief-revision processes differ from college-aged adults. Results suggest that overall, 7-year-old children (children at Stage 2 reasoning; Moshman, 1990) revise beliefs as do adults, by rejecting particular beliefs in favour of more general ones. However, only adults adjust their revision strategy as a consequence of the logical structure of the initial belief set. Adults, but not children, tend to organise their revised beliefs to be consistent with general statements more often when the set of beliefs create a Modus Tollens logic structure than when they create a Modus Ponens structure. This difference in belief revision by the two age groups reflects their sensitivity to logical structure.</span>