How does skilled conditional reasoning develop?: Testing structural intuition in young gifted children Author: Emily Morson, Northwestern University Abstract Several theories claim that a high working memory span is needed for accurate conditional reasoning, placing it out of reach for children under 12. Yet prior research (Wolf & Shigaki 1983) suggests gifted 5-8 year olds may reason at adultlike levels, despite age-typical working memory. However, this research did not test gifted children on the problems which are considered impossible for young children, the ones with uncertain solutions. To extend these findings, we compare gifted and typically developing 5-8 year olds; to explain them, we test a new model of skilled conditional reasoning, in which people solve problems by mostly unconscious analysis of their implicitly learned abstract structure. Thus, gifted children should solve abstract problems like “if there is a blicket there is a dax” as accurately as concrete ones like “if the boots have dots the scarf has stripes.” Working memory and executive function (tapped by a rote task) should not exhaustively explain reasoning; substantial variance should be left over after covarying working memory and rote performance. So, despite claims that “reasoning is little more than working memory,” higher-level cognition exists, and is needed to explain skilled conditional reasoning. Keywords: reasoning, development, conditionals, working memory, implicit learning, gifted