Mary jane's question "what if . . . ?" when she approaches a task or a puzzle is a sign of _____, that is, she considers all the relationships she can imagine and tests them systematically, one by one, to eliminate the false and arrive at the true.
I believe the answer is: hypothetical-deductive reasoning
hypothetical-deductive reasoning is a method of achieving a new knowledge that being done by creating a hypothesis followed by a series of experiment to proof that hypothesis. Currently, hypothetical-deductive reasoning is the most commonly used methods in the research of all scientific disciplines.