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= Reasoning and Problem-Solving in Children  =

Problem solving is defined as the thought process used to find solutions to problems. Problem solving skills (such as autonomic responses at birth, which later develop into voluntary actions) enable the pursuit of goal states through general methods. At 7 - 8 months of age, infants display means-end behavior: taking intermediate actions to reach a final goal. For example, they may pull away a cloth to uncover a hidden object. Later on, 4 - 5 year old children learn problem solving by analogy: the ability to apply a similar strategy that worked for a previous problem to new contexts. Reasoning is a method of problem-solving, and is defined as the action of thinking about something in a logical, sensible way.

The advent of these skills depends upon both biological capability and learning experience. An example of a biological capability is the visual system. As it develops, the ability of infants to fixate on objects of interest improves, enabling greater discovery. At first, infants use visual exploration to familiarize themselves with their environment before their locomotor skills are fully mature. Later, visual development is linked to another developmental milestone: self locomotion, when infants begin to crawl. From here on, infants can approach new objects of interest and manipulate objects that used to be out of reach. This demonstrates the links between biological capability and the capacity to gain experience. These are the lines along which problem solving and reasoning skills develop. Exploration and the experience thus gained helps babies learn how to problem solve.

Within weeks of birth, infants already possess basic numerical skills, capable of handling small numbers of objects. Some skills useful for problem solving seem to be innate. For example, infants are naturally predisposed to: numerosity, ordinality, counting, and simple arithmetic. However, experience with the physical world is necessary to expand these skills. Higher arithmetic and advanced problem solving must be learned, and are hence not innate: no one is born knowing calculus or even simple multiplication, to give an example. During their first year, moderately novel stimuli, or things they have not seen or experienced before, tend to draw infants’ attention most. As they continue to grow, infants start to develop categorical concepts. As early as one year after birth, infants may possess rudimentary analogical capabilities, such as the ability to see common features, that are crucial for problem solving.

As children continue to develop, their reasoning and problem solving capabilities continue to grow. Starting at 24 months, the level of persistence that infants show and the pedagogical role of mothers serve together as a marker of later cognitive development. . If infants display persistentence, they are more likely to attain higher levels of cognitive achievement later in life. Other abilities that develop at this time include highly developed categorical skills, which form the basis for inductive inference, the ability to infer commonalities based on perceptual groupings. Deductive reasoning, which integrates information from different sources to derive new conclusions based on logical implication, is an advanced inference skill that manifests in middle-aged children, between 6 to 11 years old.

At the onset of adolescence, the problem solving method of argumentation starts to develop more rapidly. While adults are more prone to and adept at argumentation compared to adolescents, it is during adolesence that argumentation skills tend to be developed refined through practice. Argumentation is a form of communication that may be defined as &quot;a social discourse activity in which individuals advance competing claims”.