The Development of Argument Analysis Skills in Children

Researchers across a number of fields have focused their efforts on learning how children master the social and communication skills necessary to manage conflict. For instance, sociologists and linguists are accumulating descriptions of children's disputing practices (e.g., Goodwin, 1990; Grimshaw, 1990; Maynard, 1986; Miller, 1986). Educational researchers are studying techniques that improve children's critical thinking skills (for reviews see Baron & Sternberg, 1987; Chipman, Segal & Glaser, 1985; Nickerson, Perkins & Smith, 1985). Such research efforts, while laudable, are nevertheless constrained by the lack of extensive evidence identifying the extent to which argumentation skills naturally develop, including how children learn to analyze arguments and apply procedures of adjudication. While communication researchers have initiated study of this problem, much remains to be learned (e.g., Benoit, 1984; Haslett, 1983; Katriel, 1985; Willbrand, 1981; Yingling & Trapp, 1985). As a response the present study provides an examination of one aspect of the problem, namely, the development of the ability to analyze arguments. Speech communication scholars have long recognized that the ability to analyze evidence and reasoning is crucial in formulating one's individual beliefs (e.g., Hample, 1980, 1981), and in communicating persuasively with others (e.g., McCroskey, 1969; Miller & Nilsen, 1966). Yet a number of studies show that adults often reason erroneously about arguments. For instance, adults often reason fallaciously about syllogisms,judging only the appearance features of the syllogism's premises or conclusion (Jackson, 1982; Steinfatt, Miller, & Bettinghaus, 1974). Many adults also reason incorrectly about conditional propositions (Ray & Findley, 1984). Moreover, most scholars recognize that analyzing arguments is not just making judgments about logical form but also knowing how evidence and reasoning are used by arguers (e.g., Kellerman, 1980; Miller, 1966). A functional approach to judging arguments recognizes that argument is public and functions to produce agreement between people within a shared system of knowledge about how to make and have arguments. Hence a functional approach to judging arguments focuses on learning how people come to know what others count as evidence and reasoning, and how people come to know what criteria others use to analyze evidence and reasoning to reach reasoned judgments about argumentative claims. Our direction in this study is to evaluate children's analyses of arguments with a framework that is able to detect theoretically-based changes in the qualitative features of argument analyses. Specifically our framework integrates Toulmin's (1958) theory of argument with research in social cognitive development that is interpreted with Werner's (Werner and Kaplan, 1963) conception of developmental change. Several lines of work in social cognitive development are interpreted with Werner's Orthogenetic principle (1948), which posits that with age and attendant social experience thought becomes more differentiated, abstract, and integrated. A consequence of this principle is that with age reasoning about social concepts such as fairness, morality, and friendship should and do change in qualitatively distinct ways, with each transformation replacing less functional modes of reasoning with more functional and adaptive modes of reasoning. Arguments are conceived by Toulmin (1958) as social products and organic wholes, situated in fields of discourse that evolve distinct standards for determining what counts as data and what are acceptable inference principles to use as warrants. Combining Wernerian theory with Toulmin's ideas, one would expect that children's skill in analyzing arguments includes learning to differentiate arguments within an ongoing stream of discourse, learning to differentiate and use criteria to evaluate evidence and reasoning, and learning to evaluate evidence and reasoning in ways that constitute an adequate refutation, given the expectations of proof within a given argument field. …