Conditional reasoning in preschoolers: The role of context and alternatives

Understanding conditional inferences is fundamental to human reasoning, allowing us to evaluate possibilities and predict outcomes. For instance, the conditional, “If you eat your broccoli, you’ll get a candy” can be interpreted literally, meaning eating broccoli is one way to get a candy, or pragmatically, implying it is the only way. Past studies find school-aged children (ages 7-12) struggle to arrive at literal meanings but, interestingly, compute adult-like, pragmatic interpretations at this age. An important limitation of past research is the lack of testing in contexts that support literal meanings. We conducted two studies to examine whether children can derive literal interpretations when supported by context. We found that preschoolers as young as 4 years old are adult-like in computing literal meanings when they are able to judge that the antecedent is not the only way to bring about the consequent, either because discourse introduces salient alternatives (Exp 1) or because the stated antecedent is not causally related to the consequent (Exp 2). These findings suggest that preschoolers have the logical ability and processing resources required to make conditional inferences when provided with contextual support.