Collaborative reasoning and problem-solving in early childhood

A core aspect of human intelligence is the ability to reason. Recently, the social dimension of reasoning has been emphasized such that reasoning enables people to justify their beliefs/proposals to collectively solve problems, in which the goal of the participants is to reach the decision that provides most benefit to all. An important debate in the literature is whether collaborative reasoning leads to good/optimal decisions. Here, we contrast these traditional and social views on reasoning and review the evidence on whether individuals benefit from collective reasoning in a special population: young children. We argue that collaborative problem-solving contexts uniquely facilitate the development of young children's reasoning as it pushes them to treat their partners' perspectives as equal to their own, enabling them to better understand and evaluate them. This article is part of the theme issue 'The evolution of collective intelligence'.