title: Deontic reasoning as a target of selection: reply to Astington and Dack.
abstract: In their discussion of young children's deontic reasoning performance, Astington and Dack (2013) made the following claims: (1) Children need more cues to elicit cogent social norm reasoning than adults require, namely, explicit reference to authority; (2) Deontic reasoning improves with age, and this is evidence against a nativist view; (3) All evolutionary explanations of deontic reasoning advantages require positing a ''domain-specific deontic reasoning module."; and (4) young children excel at deontic reasoning because it is easier. Here, I refute each claim. Instead, I argue that (1) Social norm reasoning is one type of deontic reasoning that has been the target of selective pressure; (2) Development does not preclude nativism; (3) Epistemic utterances make no greater processing demands than deontic utterances; and (4) both adult and child norm reasoning performance is strongly influenced by reference to or implication of authority.
authors.affiliation: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (retired), United States. Electronic address: dcummins@illinois.edu.
authors.forename: Denise Dellarosa
authors.initials: DD
authors.lastname: Cummins
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; Evolutionary psychology; Social Norms