The concept of contradiction in the study of cognitive development

Abstract

In the psychology of cognitive development contradiction has been studied for two reasons. The first is that contradiction has been hypothesised to play a causal role in cognitive development. The second is that progress in children's understanding of contradiction exemplifies the development of their logical thinking. This thesis examines children's responses to contradiction from both these viewpoints. The thesis is divided into three parts. In Part 1 the hypothesis that ,contradiction plays a causal role in development is examined. Following a discussion of the literature (Chapter 1), the definitions of the terms used in the thesis are introduced (Chapter 2). In this chapter three different situations in which contradictions can be presented are distinguished. These are: 1) a contradiction between two internally represented beliefs, 2) a contra­ diction between an internally represented belief and an external source of information, and 3) a contradiction between two external sources of information. Part 1 of the thesis is concerned only with situations 1 and 2. In Chapter 3, Experiment 1 is described. In this experiment children aged from 5 to 11 years were presented with tasks exemplifying situation and situation 2 contradictions. The experiment found that children's reactions to contradiction varied according to the type of situation used to present the contradiction. The experimental findings also raised a problem with the situation 1 method of presenting a contradiction. Experiment 2 was therefore conducted with a small sample of 5 and 6 year old children as a methodological exercise to test the validity of this method of presenting contradictions to children (Chapter 4). It was concluded that this situation does not provide clear data on the children's reactions to contradiction because conclusions drawn from its use are highly dependant on the inferences made by the experimenter. In the third experiment,5, 7, 9 and 11 year old children were presented with contradiction using the situation 2 method of presentation (Chapter 5). From this experiment it was concluded that children are undisturbed by contradictions and simply assume that either their belief or the external source of information is incorrect. They consequently eliminate the contradiction. In Chapter 6 the evidence from the first three experiments is reviewed and integrated and it is concluded that there is no evidence to show that contradiction plays a causal role in cognitive development. In Part 2 of the thesis the understanding of contradiction as an examp1 e of log ica1 thinking is examined. Chapter 7 presents a review of the literature showing that there is some debate concerning the age at which children recognise and understand a contradiction in the situation 3 defined in Chapter 2 (a contradiction between two external sources of information). An experiment is then described (Chapter 8) in which 5 and 6 year old children were presented with a logical contradiction in a verbal form. It was found that 6 year old children could recognise the contradiction. This age is considerably lower than that found by several studies in the literature. One of these studies was then partially replicated (Chapter 9)with children of 5 to 11 years of age and it was found that children needed to be appreciably older than 6 years of age before recognising a contradiction. An apparent discrepancy between the findings of Experiment 5 and Experiment 4 therefore required explanation which is provided in Part 3 of the thesis. In Part 3 of the thesis the evidence from Parts 1 and 2 is integrated, and it is suggested that the use of the concept of "contradiction" to unify the situations used in experimentation, and the children's behaviours in these situations, is dysfunctional rather than functional. An alternative explanation is suggested, which is that two mechanisms are operating when the child reacts to a "contradiction". These are a test for consistency and a formal under­ standing of logic, including logical contradiction. The test for consistency is suggested to derive from the concept of identity and the formal understanding of logical contradiction from the development of formal operational thinking. Chapters 10 and 11 develop and illustrate these suggestions. It is finally proposed that the ideas presented in the final chapters provide one point of departure for future work in this area.