title: Development of the deontic advantage in reasoning: reply to Cummins.
abstract: In response to Cummins's report that comments on our article (Dack & Astington, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2011, Vol. 110, pp. 94-114), this article clarifies our perspective on what constitutes the deontic advantage, and notes similarities and differences between Cummins's perspective and our own. Like Cummins, we believe that young children are capable of deontic reasoning and that methodological factors alone cannot explain this ability. However, we maintain that it is important to be precise about methodology in order to facilitate investigation of how the deontic advantage changes over developmental time, and this question is our main interest, although as yet incompletely answered. Contrary to Cummins, we do not think that existing data can speak to the issue of the potential innateness of deontic reasoning. We also disagree with Cummins's perspective on norm versus normative proposition and with some of her comparisons between deontic and epistemic phenomena.
authors: Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5R 2X2. Electronic address: janet.astington@utoronto.ca.
authors: Janet Wilde
authors: JW
authors: Astington
authors: Lisa Ain
authors: LA
authors: Dack
mesh_terms: D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008128:Logic; D008297:Male; D018187:Personal Construct Theory; D012938:Social Perception; D012941:Social Responsibility; D012951:Socialization; D056345:Theory of Mind
keywords: Deontic advantage; Deontic reasoning; Development; Epistemic reasoning; Social cognition; Theoretical explanation