Rule transition on the balance scale task

a case study in belief change

Brenda R.

Maartje J. Raijmakers

Ingmar Visser

pp. 211-236

in: Fabio Paglieri (ed), Changing minds, Synthese 155 (2), 2007.

Abstract

For various domains in proportional reasoning cognitive development is characterized as a progression through a series of increasingly complex rules. A multiplicative relationship between two task features, such as weight and distance information of blocks placed at both sides of the fulcrum of a balance scale, appears difficult to discover. During development, children change their beliefs about the balance scale several times: from a focus on the weight dimension (Rule I) to occasionally considering the distance dimension (Rule II), guessing (Rule III), and applying multiplication (Rule IV; Siegler, 1981). Because of the detailed empirical findings the balance scale task has become a benchmark task for computational models of proportional reasoning.