From social interaction to individual reasoning: an empirical investigation of a possible socio-cultural model of cognitive development

This study explores the theory that individual reasoning ability, as measured using standard reasoning tests, has part of its origin in dialogue with others. In the study, 64 eight- and nine-year-old children were taught the use of ‘exploratory talk’, a type of talk in which joint reasoning is made explicit. The relationship between the talk of the children and the solving of Ravenʹs test problems was studied using discourse analysis of groups working together. The findings of the study support four claims: that use of exploratory talk can improve group reasoning, that exploratory talk can be taught, that the teaching of exploratory talk can successfully transfer between educational contexts and that individual results on a standard non-verbal reasoning test significantly improved as a result of the intervention teaching exploratory talk. Our results offer support for the hypothesis that experience of social reasoning can improve scores on measures of individual reasoning. The stronger hypothesis that general cognitive development is a product of induction into social reasoning remains in doubt.