Even 4- Year-Olds Can Detect Inconsistency

Abstract

Markman (1979) asked third- to sixth-grade children to help evaluate some expository essays written by an adult, each of which contained an explicitly stated or implicit contradiction. She found that the children's ability to detect inconsistencies was quite poor and did not improve much with age. In contrast, the majority of the preschool, kindergarten, and second graders consulted in the present study spontaneously detected inconsistencies in both expository and personal essays. Both explicit and implicit contradictions were identified equally well. Performance improved with age, with second graders showing near-perfect performance. The discrepancy between the two studies can be attributed to story content differences and to methodological variations: The stories were about simple, familiar material, the ostensible writer of the stories was a “silly” puppet rather than an adult, and task instructions were explicit.