Age, schooling and conditional reasoning

This study estimated the independent effects of age and schooling in grades 7–9 on scores obtained on invalid conditional and class syllogisms. The results, which point to a negative, albeit small, effect of out-of-school experience and to a sizeable positive effect of schooling, replicate previous findings in a different age range and support the counterintuitive hypothesis that accumulated daily experience with conditionals has a negative effect on the development of conditional reasoning, and that improved performance on invalid problems with age is entirely attributable to schooling. Contrary to most cognitive tasks, therefore, in which schooling operates in the same direction as out-of-school experience, in this case, schooling breaks daily-life interpretational habits, and therefore, is critical for development.