• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.1-11
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to investigate the process of counterfactual reasoning which children undergo, based on mental model theory and dual process theory. The subjects were 120 four-year-olds and 120 five-year-olds from Ulsan. Counterfactual reasoning task conditions were created, including task type and content, which were type 1-specific, type 1-general, type 2-specific, type 2-general. There were two stories used for each task condition. Children's counterfactual reasoning score range was 0 to 8. Data were analyzed using SPSS by mean, standard deviation, one sample t-test, repeated measures of Anova. The results of this study were as follows. First, children's counterfactual reasoning was above chance level regardless of the task condition. Second, children's counterfactual reasoning was lowest when type 1-specific or type 2-specific tasks were given, slightly higher when type1-general tasks were given, and the highest when type 2-general tasks were given. There was no significant difference between 4-year-old and 5-year-old children's counterfactual reasoning.