Search results for "Conditional reasoning"
showing 2 items of 2 documents
Conditional reasoning by mental models: chronometric and developmental evidence
2000
The aim of this article is to verify two predictions resulting from the mental models theory of conditional reasoning. First, the denial of antecedent (DA) and modus tollens (MT) inferences should take longer to verify than modus ponens (MP) and affirmation of consequent (AC) because the former require subjects to flesh out the initial model whereas the latter do not. This prediction was confirmed in two reaction time experiments in adults. In line with Evans' proposal (Evans, J. St. B. T. (1993). The mental model theory of conditional reasoning: critical appraisal and revision. Cognition, 48, 1-20), there was a strong directionality effect: inferences from antecedent to consequent (MP and …
Development of conditional reasoning and Wason's selection task
2004
Influent theories on human reasoning have suggested that Wason's selection task is so difficult because it involves heuristic and implicit processes. However, recent studies have demonstrated the implication of deductive activities. Poor performance on this task would thus result from some of its characteristics that impede the use of deductive processes. In the present experiment, we hypothesised that a modified abstract selection task that induces analytic and deductive processes should lead to better performance than the standard version of the task. Moreover, deductive activities are strongly affected by development (Markovits et Barrouillet, 2002). Thus, we predicted a strong developme…