Reasoning means things like this: suppose you are holding a ball and want to make it drop. A rule of inference tells you that if you release it, it will drop. You can then reason out that you should release it.

Sure, the rule of inference may have ultimately been derived from experience, by a process which in some sense involved statistical correlation. But you have to distinguish that ultimate basis for the inference rule from _the process of logical inference itself_. It's the latter that is generally called reasoning.

Reasoning in the above sense is essential to intelligence, even at the toddler level, and the DeepMind work doesn't address reasoning. I think that may be the point the parent was getting at.