Effect of chronological age and mental age on the understanding of rules of logic.

The relative difficulty of understanding the logical rules of conjunction and disjunction was studied. Because rules of logic must be viewed in the context of the attributes of information to which they refer, three attribute dimensions were also investigated: (a) positive-negative, (b) quantitative-nonquantitative, and (c) concrete-abstract. A further issue relevant to this research was the effect of CA and MA on the understanding of rules of logic. Subjects included four groups, one group of children with average IQs, one learning-disability group, and two mentally handicapped groups. The learning disability group was matched with the average group on MA and CA. The older mentally handicapped group matched the aveage and learning-disability groups on MA. The younger mentally handicapped group matched the average and learning-disability groups for CA and the older mentally handicapped group for IQ. A test was constructed to assess rule and attribute understanding. Results indicated that all groups perfomed similarly on the concrete level. On the abstract level, the average group performed significantly higher than the other groups. The results support a developmental interpretation of rule learning which maintains that once logical rules are learned, attributes of information acquire meaning within the context of those rules.