From Play to Reason: A Cross-Cultural Study of the Development of Reason-Giving in Childhood by Gender

Abstract

Reason-giving plays an important role in children’s lives, as it promotes their cognitive and social development. The aim of this study was to explore how culture, gender and age influenced the number of reasons children give in peer interactions. A total of 371 children from Kenya and the Netherlands, between five and nine years old, participated. The experiment was designed so that two children of the same gender, culture and approximately the same age, would play a game where they had to discuss and choose one box together from two boxes to win the presents inside. For these trials, the two children got conflicting evidence of varying quality (testimonial or perceptual) to create a disagreement and spark discussion. The dependent variable ‘quantity of reasons’ was measured by adding the number of reasons given in total per child during two test trials. For analyzing this quantitative, cross-sectional data, the negative binomial regression and one-way ANOVA were used. Findings showed that age significantly predicted the quantity of reasons children gave in peer interactions, with older children giving more reasons. These results correspond with previous research, so it increased reliability. The quantity of reasons did not differ significantly between gender and cultures. These results could suggest that educational strategies and developmental theories can be used across genders and cultures, more than previously assumed.