Pier-Luc de Chantal

PhD student in Psychology
Université du Québec à Montréal

Award-winning publication:Divergent Thinking Promotes Deductive Reasoning in Preschoolers

Published in: Child Development

Reasoning and creativity are two essential skills for learning. Understanding their genesis in childhood is therefore critical in education, as well as in the analysis of individuals' cognitive development. The innovative study led by Pierre-Luc De Chantal is the first to demonstrate how creativity contributes to the emergence of reasoning in pre-schoolers. When children four to five years of age with minimal reasoning skills were encouraged to create divergent and original ideas, they performed just as well as children six to seven years of age on deduction exercises. Realigning certain educational practices to target creativity could therefore promote the optimal development of pre-schoolers' capacity to reason.