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1
Lee, John Richard. "Metalogic and the psychology of reasoning." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6625.
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The central topic of the thesis is the relationship between logic and the cognitive psychology of reasoning. This topic is treated in large part through a detailed examination of the recent work of P. N. Johnson-Laird, who has elaborated a widely-read and influential theory in the field. The thesis is divided into two parts, of which the first is a more general and philosophical coverage of some of the most central issues to be faced in relating psychology to logic, while the second draws upon this as introductory material for a critique of Johnson-Laird's `Mental Model' theory, particularly as it applies to syllogistic reasoning. An approach similar to Johnson-Laird's is taken to cognitive psychology, which centrally involves the notion of computation. On this view, a cognitive model presupposes an algorithm which can be seen as specifying the behaviour of a system in ideal conditions. Such behaviour is closely related to the notion of `competence' in reasoning, and this in turn is often described in terms of logic. Insofar as a logic is taken to specify the competence of reasoners in some domain, it forms a set of conditions on the 'input-output' behaviour of the system, to be accounted for by the algorithm. Cognitive models, however, must also be subjected to empirical test, and indeed are commonly built in a highly empirical manner. A strain can therefore develop between the empirical and the logical pressures on a theory of reasoning. Cognitive theories thus become entangled in a web of recently much-discussed issues concerning the rationality of human reasoners and the justification of a logic as a normative system. There has been an increased interest in the view that logic is subject to revision and development, in which there is a recognised place for the influence of psychological investigation. It is held, in this thesis, that logic and psychology are revealed by these considerations to be interdetermining in interesting ways, under the general a priori requirement that people are in an important and particular sense rational. Johnson-Laird's theory is a paradigm case of the sort of cognitive theory dealt with here. It is especially significant in view of the strong claims he makes about its relation to logic, and the role the latter plays in its justification and in its interpretation. The theory is claimed to be revealing about fundamental issues in semantics, and the nature of rationality. These claims are examined in detail, and several crucial ones refuted. Johnson- Laird's models are found to be wanting in the level of empirical support provided, and in their ability to found the considerable structure of explanation they are required to bear. They fail, most importantly, to be distinguishable from certain other kinds of models, at a level of theory where the putative differences are critical. The conclusion to be drawn is that the difficulties in this field are not yet properly appreciated. Psychological explantion requires a complexity which is hard to reconcile with the clarity and simplicity required for logical insights.
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Morris, M. Frances G. "The psychology of information selection and reasoning." Thesis, Bangor University, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.361192.
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Evans, Susan Dorothy. "The psychology of moral versus factual reasoning." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185012.
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The theoretical framework for this research contrasting moral and factual reasoning was derived from moral philosophy, research in the Kohlbergian tradition, social psychological research on attitude change, and research in judgment and decision making on biases in reasoning. Based on this work, moral reasoning is characterized as rule-based (top-down) and hence less sensitive to amount of evidence (number of arguments) favoring a given position, compared to factual reasoning which was expected to depend on amount of evidence. Argument processing in moral reasoning was also predicted to be more subject to confirmatory bias. 480 students read arguments, some of which confirmed, while others disconfirmed, their prior opinions. The arguments were either moral or factual in nature, the number of arguments was either high or low, and the target issue was varied (capital punishment versus teaching values in the public schools). Overall opinion, moral opinion, factual opinion, and convincingness of each argument were rated. Moral and factual reasoning were both subject to bias (overweighting of confirmatory arguments), although the former slightly more so. Also as predicted, amount of evidence had a significant effect for factual reasoning, but not for moral reasoning. Arguments exerted cross-category effects on opinion change (e.g. moral arguments on factual opinions), although within-category effects were larger. Path analysis indicated, however, that moral and factual arguments did not exert direct effects on cross-category judgments. In other words, moral arguments did not directly effect factual conclusions, nor vice versa, but were instead mediated through overall opinion. Finally, convincingness ratings exhibited a kind of compensatory equilibrium such that when the majority of arguments was disconfirmatory, the few confirmatory arguments were rated as more convincing in both moral and factual reasoning. Thus, this study indicates that moral and factual reasoning are similar in that they are both subject to opinion bias, but they differ in the kinds of judgments they directly influence, and in their responsiveness to amount of evidence. Therefore these data support a characterization of moral reasoning as rule-based and factual reasoning as evidence-based.
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Witzthum, Harry. "Reasoning across domains : an essay in evolutionary psychology." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.412727.
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Leevers, Hilary Janet. "Children's logical reasoning." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.362050.
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Narayanan, N. Hari. "Imagery, diagrams and reasoning /." The Ohio State University, 1992. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487779120907533.
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Yule, Peter. "Logic implementation in human reasoning : the psychology of syllogisms." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/26068.
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This thesis presents a novel account of syllogistic reasoning, based on data from a non-standard reasoning task called the Individuals Task. An abstract logical treatment of the system, based on a modalised Euler Circles system (Stenning & Oberlander 1994, 1995) is presented, and it is shown that this can be implemented in a diverse range of notationally distinct ways. The Individual Identification Algorithm, as this method is called, makes use of a logical distinction between the premisses of the syllogism; one has an existential, assertive role, and is called the <I>source premiss, </I>whereas the function of the other is to license inference, and so it is called the <I>conditional premiss. </I>This distinction is central to the way the IIA employs modal information to make the use of Euler Circles tractable. The empirical parts of the thesis are concerned with relating the distinction between source and conditional premisses to the Figural Effect (Johnson-Laird & Steedman 1978). It is argued that the Figural Effect is reducible to a tendency for the terms from the source premiss to occur before the terms from the conditional premiss in Individual Conclusions. Sine these are comprised of all three terms in the syllogism, it is possible to test new hypotheses concerning the role of the middle term in inference, and the results are shown to be incompatible with all existing theories of the Figural Effect. Since the Individuals Task is non-standard, it is necessary to compare performance profiles on this task with those on the Standard Task; one result of this comparison is that a primary cause of error in the Standard Task is selection of an appropriate quantifier for the conclusion, a result which concurs with the conclusions of Ford (1994) and Wetherick & Gilhooly (1990), but contradicts those of Mental Models theory (Johnson-Laird 1983). Certain anomalies in the prediction of term order by the source/conditional distinction lead to the postulation of a second process for conclusion generation, called Minimal Linking. This logically unsound strategy has effects similar to the illicit conversion of A premisses (Chapman & Chapman 1959, Revlis 1975).
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Fenton, William P. "On the Philosophy and Psychology of Reasoning and Rationality." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1574636850795921.
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Blum, Anthony John. "An investigation into the psychology of spatial and temporal reasoning /." The Ohio State University, 1993. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487841548269909.
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Sheth, Niyati. "Conditional reasoning in depression /." View online, 2009. http://repository.eiu.edu/theses/docs/32211131598952.pdf.
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Robinson, Paul David. "Social Theories of Reasoning." The Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1595031126513538.
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Farand, Lambert. "Cognitive multi-tasking in situated medical reasoning." Thesis, McGill University, 1996. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=40115.
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This study evaluates the hypothesis that medical reasoning in real clinical situations involves multiple cognitive tasks whose complex interactions are coordinated in an opportunistic manner. A problem-solving architecture originating from research in artificial intelligence, the blackboard model, is proposed as an integrative framework for representing these characteristics of situated medical reasoning and for reconciling different theoretical perspectives about medical reasoning. A naturalistic clinical situation, involving the manipulation of the patient record by an internist while managing a case, provides the empirical data for this in depth qualitative case study. The video recording of the subject's record manipulation behavior allows the cueing of retrospective think-aloud verbalizations and the preservation of the real-time aspects of problem solving. The association of theory-driven task analysis using the blackboard model with data-driven propositional analysis confirm that medical reasoning in this situation indeed comprises a variety of cognitive tasks, which are described. Also, the opportunistic character of control knowledge and the complex interactions between control strategies and cognitive tasks are confirmed and described. The blackboard model allows the principled representation of these characteristics of situated medical reasoning, thus supporting its integrative character. However, certain aspects of the data, mostly related to the ambivalence of several concepts that are used by the subject during the course of problem-solving, are not explained in the most parsimonious manner by the blackboard model, nor by symbolic cognitive architectures in general. A connectionist alternative is proposed which seems to better account for these phenomena. Finally, a tentative neurophysiological interpretation of the blackboard framework is offered for integrating the symbolic and connectionist perspectives. This study has additional implications con
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Ab, Rashid Ahmad. "Causal reasoning with continuous outcomes." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2015. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/88125/.
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Twenty experiments investigated how people reason about causal relations where a binary cause (present/absent) influences the continuous magnitude of a target outcome. The experimental design was based on a conceptual mapping of probabilistic influences in binary causation to deterministic influences on continuous effects. Doing so preserved the computational properties related to binary causation, and allowed me to test applicability of well-established causal reasoning strategies in continuous causation. The investigation employed three methods: the first one involved asking participants the standard causal questions on strength rating; the second method asked other participants to make judgments in accordance to counterfactual questions; and the third method required participants to identify the direction candidate cause influenced effect magnitude. Results reveal that when reasoning about binary causes that reduce a continuous outcome magnitude, the support is for proportional reasoning approach, which is conceptually equivalent to the Power PC theory of binary causation. When reasoning aboutcauses that increase a continuous magnitude, however, the results did not converge to any prominent strategy because of various moderating factors. Moreover, under certain circumstances, reasonsers also appear to adopt a strategy based on a multiplicative reasoning, which has not been documented in the literature before. The evidently low consistency of results within participant and within condition across experiments suggests that neither approach properly explains this type of reasoning.
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Shinn, Hong Shik. "A unified approach to analogical reasoning." Diss., Georgia Institute of Technology, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/8275.
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Chong, Florenca. "Effects of mood induction on reasoning." Thesis, University of Macau, 2012. http://umaclib3.umac.mo/record=b2588829.
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Romo, Maria Susanna 1968. "Cultural differences in memory and logical reasoning." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/291706.
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The focus of this study was to manipulate factors to determine whether mental representations of logical problems differed by culture. The cultural differences hypothesis suggests that Anglo students would be more likely to have a linear representation (e.g. arranging objects that differ in a "line" mentally) whereas Hispanic and Native American students would have a nonlinear (pivot) organization. The results indicated that Hispanic children solved questions better if they appeared in a pivotal format, whereas, Native American and Anglo children performed better if the stimuli were presented in a linear method. With grade level, Hispanic children shifted to the linear format and Anglo and Native American children improved upon the pivot presentation. This suggests that there may be differences in mental representations of objects for Hispanic children that is influenced by acculturation.
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Venn, Simon Francis. "Exploration of relevance effects in reasoning." Thesis, University of Plymouth, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/2139.
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The study examines possible underlying mechanisms that may be responsible for generally observed biased response patterns in two conditional reasoning tasks: the Wason selection task and the conditional inference evaluation task. It is proposed that memory processes that may account for priming phenomenon, may also account for the phenomena of matching bias and double-negation effects in reasoning. A new mental activation model is proposed, based on distributed theories of memory, which models relevance effects of the problem materials by way of a simple algorithm. The model is seen to parsimoniously predict previous general response patterns found using the two reasoning tasks and makes unusual predictions concerning the size of the concepts used in the reasoning problems. The findings show that matching bias can occur between materials that do not lexically match but correlate on a semantic basis, which clarifies a previously uncertain area in the literature. It is also shown that previously deemed 'irrelevant' or mismatching cards on the selection task can interfere with the perceived relevance of matching cards if they are semantically related. The findings also show a weak but significant effect of concept size on matching bias in the inference task, supporting the proposed mental activation model. Issues concerning the notion of relevance perceptions being measured by particular response choices are raised with respect to both the selection and inference tasks.
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Scott, Fiona Jane. "Reasoning, imagery and imagination in autism." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 1996. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/reasoning-imagery-and-imagination-in-autism(4201e477-18a9-4734-9aeb-44b75c41672e).html.
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Park, Jo. "Team reasoning and cooperative decision making." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/31185.
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Skovgaard, Olsen Niels [Verfasser]. "Making Ranking Theory useful for Psychology of Reasoning / Niels Skovgaard Olsen." Konstanz : Bibliothek der Universität Konstanz, 2014. http://d-nb.info/1097392996/34.
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Skovgaard-Olsen, Niels [Verfasser]. "Making Ranking Theory useful for Psychology of Reasoning / Niels Skovgaard Olsen." Konstanz : Bibliothek der Universität Konstanz, 2014. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-0-262692.
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Bezuidenhout, Shaughn. "Toward assessing scientific thinking : a qualitative analysis of student reasoning among psychology undergraduates." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/6718.
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Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2011.<br>ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The effectiveness of a research methods course on the scientific thinking skills of a group of second
year psychology students was recently reported on by Kagee, Allie and Lesch (2010). As part of
this study they developed an instrument, The Scientific in Psychology Scale, comprising 11
questions each of which required (a) the endorsement of one of two binary choices and (b) a written
explanation detailing the reasons for the choice. However, their findings were based only a
statistical analysis of (a) which allowed for a comparison between a control group and an
experimental group as a whole. The present study aims to characterize the patterns of thinking at a
more detailed level, by analysing the qualitative data for one of the questions. To this end, an
alphanumeric scheme was devised to code the data for the two groups mentioned; namely, first year
psychology students who comprised the control group, and second year psychology students who
comprised the experimental group. The coding was performed at a fine-grained level from which
broader categories were constructed.<br>AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: 'n Verslag oor die effektiwiteit van ʼn navorsingsmetodiek kursus op die wetenskaplike
denkvaardighede van ʼn groep tweedejaar sielkunde studente, was onlangs waargeneem deur Kagee,
Allie en Lesch (2010). As deel van hierdie studie het hul ʼn instrument ontwikkel, Die Wetenskaplik
Denking in Sielkunde Skaal, wat bestaan uit 11 vrae wat elk ʼn (a) borg van een of twee binêre
keuses en (b) ʼn geskrewe verduideliking wat die redes vir die besluit, omskryf. Hul bevindings was
egter net gegrond op ʼn statistiese analise van (a) wat toegelaat het vir ʼn vergelyking tussen ʼn
kontrole groep en eksperimentele groep as geheel. Hierdie studie beoog om die patrone van denke
op ʼn meer gedetaileerde vlak te karakteriseer, deur analise van kwalitatiewe data van een van die
vrae. Ten einde dit te bereik, is ʼn alfanumeriese skema geskep om die data van die twee
reedsgenoemde groepe te kodeer; naamlik, eerste jaar studente wat deel gevorm het van die
kontrole groep, en tweede jaar studente wat deel gevorm het van die eksperimentele groep. Die
kodering was uitgevoer op ʼn hoogs gedetaileerde vlak waaruit wyer kategorieë gekonstrueer is.
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McGreggor, Brian Keith. "Fractal reasoning." Diss., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/50337.
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Humans are experts at understanding what they see. Similarity and analogy play a significant role in making sense of the visual world by forming analogies to similar images encountered previously. Yet, while these acts of visual reasoning may be commonplace, the processes of visual analogy are not yet well understood.
In this dissertation, I investigate the utility of representing visual information in a fractal manner for computing visual similarity and analogy. In particular, I develop a computational technique of fractal reasoning for addressing problems of visual similarity and novelty. I illustrate the effectiveness of fractal reasoning on problems of visual similarity and analogy on the Raven’s Progressive Matrices and Miller’s Analogies tests of intelligence, problems of visual novelty and oddity on the Odd One Out test of intelligence, and problems of visual similarity and oddity on the Dehaene test of core geometric reasoning. I show that the performance of my computational model on these various tests is comparable to human performance.
Fractal reasoning provides a new method for computing answers to such problems. Specifically, I show that the choice of the level of abstraction of problem representation determines the degree to which an answer may be regarded as confident, and that that choice of abstraction may be controlled automatically by the algorithm as a means of seeking that confident answer. This emergence of ambiguity and its remedy via problem re-representation is afforded by the fractal representation. I also show how reasoning over sparse data (at coarse levels of abstraction) or homogeneous data (at finest levels of abstraction) could both drive the automatic exclusion of certain levels of abstraction, as well as provide a signal to shift the analogical reasoning from consideration of simple analogies (such as analogies between pairs of objects) to more complex analogies (such as analogies among triplets, or larger groups of objects).
My dissertation also explores fractal reasoning in perception, including both biologically-inspired imprinting and bistable perception. In particular, it provides a computational explanation of bistable perception in the famous Necker cube problem that is directly tied to the process of determining a confident interpretation via re-representation.
Thus, my research makes two primary contributions to AI theories of visual similarity and analogy. The first contribution is the Extended Analogy By Recall (ABR*) algorithm, the computational technique for visual reasoning that automatically adjusts fractal representations to an appropriate level of abstraction. The second contribution is the fractal representation itself, a knowledge representation that add the notion of self-similarity and re-representation to analogy making.
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Zahra, Daniel. "Mood, emotive content, and reasoning." Thesis, University of Plymouth, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/1490.
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Theories of how individuals reason, and how they experience emotion abound in the psychological literature; yet, despite the common lay-theories of how emotions might affect a person’s reasoning, very little empirical work has been conducted on this relationship. The current thesis addresses this knowledge-gap by first distilling from the literature two classes of emotion theory; Information, and Load; and then systematically testing the explanatory power of these theories. A dual-process framework is employed in order to define low (Type One) and high effort (Type Two) strategies. Information theories predict that negative emotion cues more analytic processing relative to positive emotion, whereas load theories predict both positive and negative emotion to suppress use of high-effort strategies. Thus the two theories are compared by varying incidental and integral emotion across syllogistic reasoning, conditional reasoning, and the ratio-bias task, and assessing the engagement of Type One and Type Two processes across positive emotion, negative emotion, and control conditions. The findings suggest that emotion effects in syllogistic reasoning do not consistently support either Load or Information theories (Experiments 1-4). Emotion effects are found to be typically larger for integral than incidental emotion (Experiment 5), and most frequently serve as Information in verbal (Experiments 6 and 7) and visual conditional reasoning tasks (Experiment 8). Furthermore, these effects are to a large extent dependent on task properties such as the number of alternative antecedents (Experiments 9 and 10), and are greater on more difficult tasks (Experiments 11 and 12). These findings suggest that emotion has a greater impact on Type Two than Type One processes. A range of methodological and theoretical implications which will inform future work in this area are also discussed in the closing chapter.
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Chavira, Maria Romo 1968. "Cultural differences in reasoning and memory: A follow-up." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/289477.
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The focus of this study was to manipulate factors to determine whether mental representation of logical problems differed by culture. The cultural differences hypothesis suggests that Anglo students would be more likely to have a linear representation (e.g., arranging objects that differ in a "line" mentally) whereas Hispanic students would have a nonlinear (pivot) representation. The results indicated that Hispanic children solved questions better if they appeared in a pivotal format, whereas Anglo children performed better if the stimuli were presented in a linear method. With grade level children improved upon the linear format. This suggests that there may be differences in mental representations of objects for Hispanic children that is influenced by acculturation.
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Ellis, Matthew Charles. "Linguistic and semantic factors in conditional reasoning." Thesis, University of Plymouth, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/1831.
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Amin, Yazdi Seyed Amir. "Theory of mind reasoning in Iranian children." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.289636.
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Gregory, D. J. "Age-related changes in inductive reasoning processes." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 1986. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.372614.
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Aleixo, Paulo Alexandre. "Personality and moral reasoning in young offenders." Thesis, University of Leicester, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/34652.
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The studies presented in this thesis, examined the differences in personality, moral reasoning maturity, intellectual capacity, and family background variables in convicted male young offenders and controls. In addition, the relationship between these variables and self-reported offending behaviour was investigated. The main aim of the investigations was to test predictions from the theories of criminality proposed by H. J. Eysenck (1964; 1970; 1977) and Kohlberg (1969) which associate offending behaviour with lower moral reasoning maturity and the personality characteristics of high psychoticism, extraversion and neuroticism. Results suggested that both official and self-reported measures of offending were related to high psychoticism and extraversion, lower moral reasoning maturity, lower intelligence (perhaps through mediation by moral reasoning and lower socio-economic status). Neuroticism was not found to be important in predicting offending in the age group used, but was assumed to be involved in older individuals when offending behaviour had developed into a habit. These variables were also found to interact to predict offending behaviours. Some of these variables (notably extraversion and neuroticism) were found to be related to specific types of offending. It was concluded that support for H. J. Eysenck and Kohlberg's theories of criminality was found and initial steps were taken in incorporating the various factors found to be associated with offending into a testable model of offending behaviour. Additionally, a study investigating response bias to moral reasoning and personality tests and another examining personality and moral reasoning in disturbed children are reported.
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Jiménez-Leal, William. "The relationship between causal and counterfactual reasoning." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2008. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3334/.
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This thesis represents a contribution to the study of causal and counterfactual reasoning. In six experiments, the relationship between causal selection and counterfactual reasoning and selection is directly investigated. The results support the conclusion that causal contingency information is available for both causal and counterfactual judgements, and that its availability interacts with task demands. Specifically, causal and counterfactual selections were found to depend on the specificity of the description of the outcomes (Experiments 1 to 3). Furthermore, when considering causal chains, causal and counterfactual selections correspond to probability increases and change (Experiments 4 and 5), and can be described by a model that takes those changes into account. Further evidence is offered by the analysis of causal and counterfactual conditionals. It was found that when frequency information is used, the assessments of these conditionals tend to agree (Experiments 6 and 7), as predicted by recent theories of conditional reasoning. The results are interpreted based on the main theories of reasoning available, and it is proposed that these explanations can be integrated into the larger framework of causal models.
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Arnold, Christopher B. "Inferred Statistics and Ecological Validity in Bayesian Reasoning." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1521816469920848.
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Lambell, Nicola-Jane. "The influence of belief bias on syllogistic reasoning." Thesis, University of Plymouth, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/2036.
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The syllogistic evaluation task paradigm requires participants to assess whether a conclusion is logically determined by its premises. The inability to ignore beliefs when attempting to comply with this requirement is the phenomenon known as 'belief bias'. This research programme primarily examines this phenomenon and is motivated by conflicting accounts of how it arises. This research also examines the relative believability of the logical quantifiers which are used to construct the syllogistic task. Current theories of belief bias differ in respect of whether the premises or the conclusion are thought to guide the reasoning process. Explicit attempts to focus participants' attention on the conclusion or the premises indicated that either method of reasoning was plausible. Subsequent research demonstrated that these methods of reasoning are fairly paradigm specific. Participants appear to utilise the premises to guide the reasoning process only when there is no conclusion to evaluate (the production task paradigm). The presence of the conclusion tends to evoke conclusion based reasoning and in turn tends to promote a greater reliance on beliefs. In general, across the experiments participants appeared to be fairly competent at evaluating conclusions. However, their responses appeared to be based on whether a conclusion was consistent with the premises as opposed to whether it was logically determined by them. Belief bias actually appeared to have a beneficial effect on logical reasoning as the presence of unbelievable conclusions appeared to motivate participants to search for the logically correct response. The Mental Model theory of reasoning provided a useful framework in which to describe the results. However, additional assumptions were needed to accommodate the notion, that when presented with a conclusion, participants utilise it to guide the construction of a mental representations of the premises.
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Vallée-Tourangeau, Frédéric. "Adjustment to disconfirming evidence in a covariation judgment task : the role of alternative predictive relationships." Thesis, McGill University, 1993. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=41208.
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This project investigated the impact of sustained disconfirmation on an acquired belief in a covariation judgment task. Both epistemology and the philosophy of science suggest that data which oppose a hypothesis might not dictate the revision of the hypothesis unless an alternative hypothesis can explain the negative evidence and replace the previous hypothesis. As well, the literature on human categorization and reasoning documents a preference for examples and test instances which confirm rather than disconfirm a prior hypothesis. It was therefore predicted that upon the presentation of negative data for an acquired correlational expectation, subjects would abandon their disconfirmed hypothesis with greater ease if the negative evidence was supplemented with alternative hypotheses. A series of four experiments examined this prediction. Using a within-subjects design, subjects first learned that certain predictor variables signalled the presence of certain outcome variables. In a second phase, the outcomes were systematically presented in the absence of the predictors. Adjustment to the negative evidence was measured on the basis of estimates of correlation and the subjects' tendency to predict the presence of the outcomes on trials where the predictors were present. There were three experimental conditions. In the first, an alternative predictor was present on all trials where the outcomes occurred in the absence of the original predictor. In a second, an alternative outcome was present on all trials where the original outcome was absent. In a third, the negative evidence was not framed in terms of either alternative predictors nor alternative outcomes. While all three conditions produced the same reductions in correlation estimates, the condition without alternatives produced perseverance in outcome predictions in the presence of the predictors. This pattern of adjustment was observed in a simulated medical diagnostic task (Experiment 1), and in a nonmedical s
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Richard, Laurence. "The contribution of non-spatial information to geographic reasoning." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1396966668.
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Oliver, Keith A. "An analysis of moral reasoning, contact, relationship and homophobia /." The Ohio State University, 1993. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487841975359629.
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Talboy, Alaina N. "Reference Dependence in Bayesian Reasoning." Scholar Commons, 2019. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/7964.
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The purpose of this dissertation is to examine aspects of the representational and computational influences on Bayesian reasoning as they relate to reference dependence. Across three studies, I explored how dependence on the initial problem structure influences the ability to solve Bayesian reasoning tasks. Congruence between the problem and question of interest, response errors, and individual differences in numerical abilities was assessed. The most consistent and surprising finding in all three experiments was that people were much more likely to utilize the superordinate value as part of their solution rather than the anticipated reference class values. This resulted in a weakened effect of congruence, with relatively low accuracy even in congruent conditions, as well as a different pattern of response errors than what was anticipated. There was consistent and strong evidence of a value selection bias in that incorrect responses almost always conformed to values that were provided in the problem rather than errors related to computation. The one notable exception occurred when no organizing information was available in the problem, other than the instruction to consider a sample of the same size as that in the problem. In that case, participants were most apt to sum all of the subsets of the sample to yield the size of the original sample (N). In all three experiments, higher numerical skills were generally associated with higher accuracy, whether calculations were required or not.
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Lit, Keith. "Moral Reasoning and Moral Emotions Linking Hoarding and Scrupulosity." NSUWorks, 2017. http://nsuworks.nova.edu/cps_stuetd/111.
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Hoarding and scrupulous OCD are part of the Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, which are characterized by obsessional preoccupation and ritualistic behavior. Prior research has found a statistical relationship between hoarding and scrupulosity after controlling for these common factors, suggesting the existence of other features shared by these two disorders. Clinical accounts and empirical research of hoarding and scrupulosity suggest three such shared factors: a tendency to experience intense guilt and shame, rigid moralistic thinking, and general cognitive rigidity. However, results of the current study show that, although both hoarding and scrupulosity were related to cognitive rigidity and a tendency to experience guilt and shame, they are not associated with rigid moralistic thinking. Instead, beliefs about the importance of emotions as moral guides were related to both disorders. These results are interpreted in terms of dual-process theories of moral reasoning. Additionally, implications for the conceptualization and treatment of hoarding and scrupulosity are discussed.
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Ding, Sharon. "Developing structural representations : their role in analogical reasoning." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 1995. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11896/.
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Recent research into the development of analogical reasoning has shown that young children are able to recognise and use relational similarity between situations, provided that they possess the necessary domain knowledge (Goswami, 1992). However, in most of the reported studies, the relational structure of the analogy has been made very salient. Circumstances where the relational structure of a problem has to be represented by the problem-solver themselves could result in differing performance. We do not know whether, or in what circumstances, children can correctly construct a representation of the relevant relational information. This thesis reports a series of experiments which investigate the role and development of structural representations for the purposes of analogical reasoning. The first two experiments tested whether primary aged children are able to construct an integrated external task representation by combining separate pieces of relational knowledge. Using series problems as a domain, they provided evidence that performance was not affected by the actual relation used, i.e. either spatial or non-spatial (abstract). However, it was observed that the order in which the task information was presented had an effect. The next four studies explored this by using spatial series problems. They showed that tasks which required a novel item to be placed to the left of (that is, at the front of) a partially ordered array inhibited performance. A further three experiments found that the reason for the inhibition was that unless the different pieces of relational information were highlighted as distinct items, they would be incorrectly integrated by using simple 'add-to-end' ordering rules. The final set of studies, using abstract evaluative relations in series problems, found that relational-highlighting effects generalised to these types of tasks. Also, the results showed that some evaluative relations were tied to either horizontal or vertical spatial representations and that performance was affected by how consistent the representation was with the child's experience of every-day life. The thesis showed that the ability to construct structural task representations is affected by features which are inherent in the presentation of specific tasks, and that incorrect structural representations in turn affect analogical mapping. These findings are discussed in terms of the 'generalised schemas' used during analogical mapping. It is suggested that these might be reconstructed using specific task information, rather than being retrieved intact from memory.
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Burgess, Katy V. "Associative analyses of reasoning-like behaviour in rats." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2012. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/46487/.
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This thesis examines how rats represent relationships in their environment. There are currently two broad classes of account of how animals learn about such relationships: The associative account offers a relatively simple mechanistic account of behaviour; while the second account proposes that animal behaviour, like human behaviour, is underpinned by the processes of causal and deductive reasoning, that are beyond associative analyses. Chapter 1 identifies three domains in which these two classes of account provide quite different analyses of animal behaviour, which are experimentally investigated in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. Chapter 2 reports three experiments that investigated the accuracy of predictions derived from the claim that rats are capable of forming and using causal models involving their own interactions with their environment (interventions) and external events (Blaisdell, Sawa, Leising, & Waldmann, 2006). The results failed to confirm these predictions and were instead more consistent with the operation of simpler processes. The results from Chapter 2 left open two interpretations: either rats can represent causality but do not use such representations to reason, or they do not represent cause per se. Chapter 3 investigated these alternatives in three experiments using a timing task, which should be sensitive to whether rats are more likely to represent their actions as causal than external events (Buehner & Humphreys, 2009). The results provided no support for the view that causal binding occurs in rats. Chapter 3 examined the possibility that sensory preconditioning might reflect a form of deductive reasoning (Hall, 1990). However, taken together, the results from four experiments provided no support for such an analysis; but instead helped to inform the nature of the associative processes that underlie sensory preconditioning. In summary, while the results reported in this thesis provide no support for analyses of animal behaviour that rely on the processes of causal or deductive reasoning, they do help to inform the nature of the associative processes involved.
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Chapman, G. William IV. "A Model of Relational Reasoning through Selective Attention." Thesis, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10826569.
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<p> Understanding the relationship between sets of objects is a fundamental requirement of cognitive skills, such as learning from example or generalization. For example, recognizing that planets revolve around stars, and not the other way around, is essential for understanding astronomical systems. However, the method by which we recognize and apply such relations is not clearly understood. In particular, how a set of neurons is able to represent which object fulfills which role (role binding), presented difficulty in past studies. Here, we propose a systems-level model, which utilizes selective attention and working memory, to address issues of role binding. In our model, selective attention is used to perceive visual stimuli such that all relations can be reframed as an operation from one object unto another, and so binding becomes an issue only in the initial recognition of the direction of the relation. We test and refine this model, utilizing EEG during a second-order relational reasoning task. Epoched EEG was projected to the cortical surface, providing sourcespace estimates of event related potentials. Permutation testing revealed 8 cortical clusters which responded differentially based on the specifics of a trial. Dynamic connectivity between these clusters was estimated with the directed transfer function, to reveal the dynamic causality between regions. Our results support the model, identifying a distinct bottom-up network that identifies relations between single pairs of objects, along with a top-down biasing network that may reorient attention to sequential pairs of objects. Taken together, our results show that relational reasoning can be performed by a distributed network, utilizing selective attention</p><p>
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Glazier, Taylah. "Differences in clinical reasoning among psychology students: A qualitative approach in exploring expertise." Thesis, Glazier, Taylah (2020) Differences in clinical reasoning among psychology students: A qualitative approach in exploring expertise. Masters by Coursework thesis, Murdoch University, 2020. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/60877/.
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Aims: To explore psychology students verbal clinical decision-making to better understand their reasoning processes. Broadly, we aim to capture these abilities to determine any common themes or gaps within responses that may be helpful in providing information that may inform better teaching practices at Murdoch University.
Methods: Semi-structured qualitative interviews based on a clinical vignette were developed for this study. The sample contained (N=12) psychology students enrolled in either undergraduate or postgraduate (professional masters and clinical masters). Thematic analysis was employed in line with Braun and Clarke (2006) guidelines.
Results: Eleven subthemes emerged from the data. Across participants, there was observable difficulties in their ability to generate/articulate a primary hypothesis. Moreover, participants also had difficulty in either articulating or being able to provide reasoning as to how they made their decisions about the case. Differences between postgraduate and undergraduate forms of reasoning were also observed- postgraduates typically demonstrated more evidence of forward reasoning.
Conclusion: Findings suggest that across the board, students understanding of a hypothesis and their ability to articulate their clinical reasoning was limited. These results point to recommendations for future teaching programs to emphasise reflective practices.
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Inglis, Matthew. "Dual processes in mathematics : reasoning about conditionals." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2006. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/2847/.
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This thesis studies the reasoning behaviour of successful mathematicians. It is based on the philosophy that, if the goal of an advanced education in mathematics is to develop talented mathematicians, it is important to have a thorough understanding of their reasoning behaviour. In particular, one needs to know the processes which mathematicians use to accomplish mathematical tasks. However, Rav (1999) has noted that there is currently no adequate theory of the role that logic plays in informal mathematical reasoning. The goal of this thesis is to begin to answer this specific criticism of the literature by developing a model of how conditional “if…then” statements are evaluated by successful mathematics students. Two stages of empirical work are reported. In the first the various theories of reasoning are empirically evaluated to see how they account for mathematicians’ responses to the Wason Selection Task, an apparently straightforward logic problem (Wason, 1968). Mathematics undergraduates are shown to have a different range of responses to the task than the general well-educated population. This finding is followed up by an eve-tracker inspection time experiment which measured which parts of the task participants attended to. It is argued that Evans’s (1984, 1989, 1996, 2006) heuristic-analytic theory provides the best account of these data. In the second stage of empirical work an in-depth qualitative interview study is reported. Mathematics research students were asked to evaluate and prove (or disprove) a series of conjectures in a realistic mathematical context. It is argued that preconscious heuristics play an important role in determining where participants allocate their attention whilst working with mathematical conditionals. Participants’ arguments are modelled using Toulmin’s (1958) argumentation scheme, and it is suggested that to accurately account for their reasoning it is necessary to use Toulmin’s full scheme, contrary to the practice of earlier researchers. The importance of recognising that arguments may sometimes only reduce uncertainty in the conditional statement’s truth/falsity, rather than remove uncertainty, is emphasised. In the final section of the thesis, these two stages are brought together. A model is developed which attempts to account for how mathematicians evaluate conditional statements. The model proposes that when encountering a mathematical conditional “if P then Q”, the mathematician hypothetically adds P to their stock of knowledge and looks for a warrant with which to conclude Q. The level of belief that the reasoner has in the conditional statement is given by a modal qualifier which they are prepared to pair with their warrant. It is argued that this level of belief is fixed by conducting a modified version of the so-called Ramsey Test (Evans & Over, 2004). Finally the differences between the proposed model and both formal logic and everyday reasoning are discussed.
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Barston, Julie Linda. "An investigation into belief biases in reasoning." Thesis, University of Plymouth, 1986. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/1906.
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This programme of research investigates the effect of belief bias in syllogistic reasoning. Belief bias is conventionally characterised as a non-logical tendency to accept or reject deductive inferences on the basis of belief rather than logical argument. However, some theorists have argued that the effect is weak compared with that of logic and that it arises from misinterpretation of the premises or failure to accept the logical task. Despite the adoption of controls recommended in the recent literature, Experiments 1 to 3 found consistently strong belief bias effects on the syllogistic evaluation task. However, there were equally strong effects of logic and an interaction between the two factors. Verbal protocol analysis revealed some possible misinterpretation of premises. More strikingly, however, it suggested the presence of three different modes of reasoning which were forward, backward or conclusion based and associated respectively with increasing levels of belief bias. Belief bias was not observed in Experiments 4 and 5 which employed similar problem content on the syllogistic construction task. However, in view of findings recently published by other researchers, it appears that more salient beliefs are needed to produce the effect on this type of task. Experiments 6 to 9 investigated the cause of the logic times belief interaction observed here and in earlier published studies: in essence, the effect of belief is stronger on invalid than valid problems. This could be due to misinterpretation of the logical concept of necessity, but extended instruction on logical interpretation failed to eliminate the effect. The findings were more consistent with a selective scrutiny model of belief bias which claims that arguments supporting unbelievable conclusions are more thoroughly analysed than those supporting believable conclusions. This model is discussed with reference to contemporary theories and findings in the psychology of reasoning.
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Rapus, Tanja L. "Integrating information about mechanism and covariation in casual reasoning." Thesis, McGill University, 2001. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=84421.
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Causal reasoning is an important and complex process, in which individuals have multiple sources of information available to inform their judgments. An enduring tension exists between what cues to causality people use and focus on in acquiring causal knowledge and making causal judgments. Much research on causal reasoning has focused on how people use information about covariation in this process. More recently, research has shown that people seek and use information about causal mechanisms to inform their causal inferences. Consequently, an important theoretical question is how people combine knowledge about causal mechanisms, that is, how a candidate cause works to bring about or produce a given effect, with information about covariation, which is the empirical relation between these two variables.<br>Very little research has investigated how these two sources of information are integrated in determining people's causal judgments. Two general models of how these sources of input are combined currently exist: covariation and mechanism precedence models. Both these models account for people's causal judgments on the basis of the primacy of one source of information over the other.<br>The research presented in this thesis investigates several variables that are hypothesized to be key in the integration of covariation and mechanism information. It is hypothesized that the scope of the covariation information available, as well as the strength of the covariation present between possible cause and effect are important dimensions of covariation input. It is also hypothesized that the nature and structure of mechanism information available to the reasoner is an important variable influencing the integration, specifically the detailedness of the representation of mechanism information. In four experiments the effects of these different variables on judgments of causality were assessed in combination. Overall it was found that how information about covariation strength is used depends on the detailedness of mechanism information and the scope over which covariation information is defined. The results indicate that one source of information does not have primacy over the other. Thus, an interactive model of how these sources of input are integrated is proposed.
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Ralston, Robert. "Feature Induction and Categorical Reasoning: Evidence for Age-Related Differences." The Ohio State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1557139449197153.
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Hayes, Taylor Ray. "Mechanisms of Visual Relational Reasoning." The Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1416933187.
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Powell, Nina Laurel. "Reasoning and processing of behavioural and contextual information : influences on pre-judgement reasoning, post-judgement information selection and engagement, and moral behaviour." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2013. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4252/.
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Recent research on moral judgements tends to emphasise the role of intuition, emotion and non-deliberative gut-reactions to moral violations. The aim of this thesis was to investigate instances during the judgement process and on resulting behaviour when deliberative consideration and processing of behavioural and contextual information (i.e., information beyond initial gut-reactions and intuitions) occurred. Specifically, this thesis examined the effects of reasoning about behavioural and contextual information pre-judgement, the desires and needs for and engagement with behavioural information and the effects of behavioural and contextual information on eliciting moral behaviour. Across seven experiments, I demonstrated (1) that age-related changes in the ability to reason about the means through which a negative outcome occurred influenced attributions of blameworthiness, (2) that postjudgement information selection and engagement differed depending on the moral violation judged, emotions elicited from the violations and the amount of reported epistemic certainty, and (3) that the presence of information about the outcome of a morally virtuous act influenced later helping behaviour. These findings suggest that deliberative reasoning and processing of behavioural and contextual information can occur and influence judgements and behaviour at different stages in the judgement process.
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Cho, Soohyun. "Component processes of analogical reasoning and their neural substrates." Diss., Restricted to subscribing institutions, 2008. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1619392411&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=1564&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Bienkowski, Sarah C. Bowler Mark C. "A conditional reasoning measure of goal orientation : preliminary development." [Greenville, N.C.] : East Carolina University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10342/2222.
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Thesis (M.A.)--East Carolina University, 2009.<br>Presented to the faculty of the Department of Psychology. Advisor: Mark C. Bowler. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed June 11, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.
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Mitchell, Erica Rachel. "Instruction type and stereotype threat in analytical reasoning: Can creativity help?" CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2008. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/3362.
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Stereotype threat is the fear that a person's behavior or performance will confirm an existing stereotype of a group with which that person identifies. The purpose of this study was to look at the effect of instruction and emphasis on the female performance on an analytical reasoning task. This study tested undergraduate students taking a psychology course from California State University at San Bernardino. In this thesis, the task was framed as either an analytical reasoning task, a creative reasoning task, or there was no framing present. This study found that performance did differ as a result of instruction type, with creative instruction yielding higher scores. Varying instruction type performance can improve performance on an analytical reasoning task.