Development of scientific reasoning biases: Cognitive versus ego-protective explanations.

Two conflicting perspectives have dominated the literature on self-serving reasoning biases. One maintains that individuals have difficulty objectively processing information relevant to their personal theories because they are reluctant to relinquish their cause-effect beliefs relevant to that domain. The ego-protective view claims that such biases arise because they enhance or protect individuals' self-views. These opposing positions were studied with 5th, 8th, and 11th graders. Scientific reasoning improved with age. Analyses of biases, indicated by ratings of evidence quality and written justifications, yielded mixed results regarding developmental trends in reasoning biases. Both theoretical beliefs and ego-protective motivations predicted reasoning biases. An accuracy motivation led to more complex justifications but failed to reduce reasoning biases. Adolescents appear to selectively apply their scientific reasoning skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The development of scientific reasoning in knowledge-rich contexts.

In this study of the development of scientific reasoning, 10 5th–6th-grade children ( 5 boys and 5 girls) and 10 noncollege adults conducted experiments over 6 half-hour sessions to explore the causal structure of 2 physical science domains. Feedback in these systems, though relevant to discriminating among hypotheses, was noisy as a result of varying effect sizes and measurement error. After 2 hr on each task, both age groups demonstrated changes in their understanding of the content and in their strategies for generating and interpreting evidence. In general, the adults outperformed the children. Neither valid strategies nor correct beliefs alone was sufficient to guarantee success, suggesting that regarding experimentation either as domain-general induction or as domain-specific learning may oversimplify its complexity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acquisition of formal scientific reasoning by 10- and 13-year-olds: Designing a factorial experiment.

A study of 60 5th and 8th graders indicates that 8th graders who received conceptual-framework-plus-analog problem instruction generated more complete factorial arrays than did Ss who received conceptual framework alone who tended to attain perfect performance more often than Ss in the control condition. 5th-grade conceptual-framework-plus-analog Ss generated all combinations more often than Ss in either of the 2 remaining conditions, which did not differ. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acquisition of formal scientific reasoning by 10- and 13-year-olds: Detecting interactive patterns in data.

Attempted to teach a scientific reasoning skill, the detection of interactive patterns in data, to 128 10- and 13-yr-olds. The instructional procedure was closely based on a flow chart model of a strategy sufficient to solve the types of interaction problems that would be presented. Predictions from the model concerning the general efficacy of the procedure, the relative difficulty of the problems, and the pattern of learning were largely supported. The fact that some of the predictions ran counter to previous, related findings and to the general intuitions provided additional evidence of the model's utility. The advantages of formal models in deriving nonintuitive predictions and in distinguishing what is taught from what is learned are discussed. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Empirical constraints on theories of scientific reasoning: Reply to Baron (1990).

J. Baron (see record 1990-27432-001) makes two assertions concerning our research on reflectiveness in scientific reasoning (D. Duemler and R. E. Mayer; see record 1989-14366-001): (a) His theory, particularly as stated in Baron (1988), predicts our findings, and (b) we have misnamed the independent variable in our study as reflectiveness. In this essay, we briefly respond to each assertion and call for three improvements in theories of scientific reasoning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anomalies as a catalyst for middle school students' knowledge construction and scientific reasoning during science inquiry.

Knowledge construction and scientific reasoning of 7th-grade students were examined during a 3-week inquiry unit in genetics, in which anomalies were used as a catalyst for student learning. Students used genetics simulation software to develop hypotheses and run tests of fruit fly crosses in order to develop mental models of simple dominance trait transmission. Instruction was intended to support discovery of anomalous patterns and development of explanations. Qualitative and quantitative analyses indicated that student explanations showed a significant shift toward greater explanatory power of the anomalous inheritance patterns. However, this shift did not occur evenly. Students were more likely to propose hypotheses and explanations for the more frequently occurring anomaly and more likely to run the test that produced that outcome relative to the less frequently occurring anomaly. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interdependence of formal reasoning.

Administered a concept attainment task, a logic test, and an identity status interview to female undergraduates. Performance on the 2 reasoning measures was unrelated, and identity crisis Ss did not perform better than noncrisis Ss. Results support Piaget's (1972) speculation that formal reasoning may be used selectively rather than being all-pervasive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Elements of the Socratic method: II. Inductive reasoning.

The Socratic method uses systematic questioning and inductive reasoning to help clients derive universal definitions. In psychotherapy, inductive reasoning can be based on enumerative generalizations, analogical comparisons, and eliminative causal reasoning. Enumerative generalizations use pattern identification to support a conclusion about an entire group of events. Analogical comparisons help clients transfer knowledge from familiar to novel situations. Eliminative causal reasoning involves manipulating environmental conditions to examine possible causes of specific problematic events. After a probable cause has been identified, it can be modified through treatment. The clinical utility and fallacies of logical reasoning are discussed as they apply to each of the 3 forms of inductive reasoning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facilitating children's proportional reasoning: A model of reasoning processes and effects of intervention on strategy change.

In this study, 140 fourth graders were asked to solve proportion problems about juice-mixing situations both before and after an intervention that used a manipulative model or other materials in 3 experiments. Using a manipulative model based on children's prior knowledge about crowdedness and equal distribution was effective in letting children discover a unit strategy, which was useful for solving proportion problems. The model was more effective for those who had an appropriate representation but could not correctly compare juice concentrations than it was for those who didn't have the representation. On the basis of this study, different approaches appear to be necessary to facilitate children's proportional reasoning, depending on the reasoning process (representation or comparison) with which children are having difficulty. Interventions on the basis of the process model and learning that builds on intuitive knowledge are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Overcoming intuition: Metacognitive difficulty activates analytic reasoning.

Humans appear to reason using two processing styles: System 1 processes that are quick, intuitive, and effortless and System 2 processes that are slow, analytical, and deliberate that occasionally correct the output of System 1. Four experiments suggest that System 2 processes are activated by metacognitive experiences of difficulty or disfluency during the process of reasoning. Incidental experiences of difficulty or disfluency--receiving information in a degraded font (Experiments 1 and 4), in difficult-to-read lettering (Experiment 2), or while furrowing one's brow (Experiment 3)--reduced the impact of heuristics and defaults in judgment (Experiments 1 and 3), reduced reliance on peripheral cues in persuasion (Experiment 2), and improved syllogistic reasoning (Experiment 4). Metacognitive experiences of difficulty or disfluency appear to serve as an alarm that activates analytic forms of reasoning that assess and sometimes correct the output of more intuitive forms of reasoning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Response to contradiction: Scientific reasoning during adolescence.

In this study we examined how students restructure their scientific ideas in response to contradiction. Using equal numbers of male and female subjects, we presented 166 students aged 12, 13, and 14 with two conditions. In one interview condition, students were asked to make predictions about how much water would be displaced by objects of varying size, shape, and weight. They were then asked to test their predictions with physical apparatus by actually immersing objects in water. In the other inteview conditions, students were presented with the same experiences, but with an additional early opportunity to examine the equipment and to generate alternative variables. At first, subjects' predictions were generally wrong (in that they were guided by a weight rule). Gradually, most students changed their predictions in the face of contradictory evidence to a correct rule (volume). During the interview, boys learned the correct rule more quickly than did girls. However, there was a significant Sex?×?Treatment interaction for girls who had the additional opportunity to examine the equipment. We concluded that for girls, such additional experiences may (a) compensate for an initial lack of familiarity with formal experimental setting and (b) encourage them to use analogical reasoning processes to generate a list of potentially relevant variables. Furthermore, we noted that conceptual change requires reflection and that science educators should support the learner's mechanisms for restructuring information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditional reasoning: The necessary and sufficient conditions.

Five experiments, with 163 university students, investigated 2 theories of conditional reasoning (CDR). The pragmatic schema theory posits that CDR is mediated by context-sensitive inference rules. According to the contextual cuing theory, inferences are based on a mental model that represents necessity and sufficiency relations. Both schematic relations and necessity relations predicted responses on a 4-card selection task. In contrast, after the effects of perceived necessity had been partialled out, schematic relations did not predict responses to either a conditional arguments task or a task in which Ss judged the similarity of "if then" and "only if" statements. Findings question the assumption that reasoning is mediated by schematic rules, which presumably apply regardless of task. A reconceptualization of the pragmatic reasoning schema is proposed. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prologue: Cultural Aspects of Learning Disabilities.

Discusses the concept of "learning disability," and introduces the articles in this issue of Canadian Psychologist. Topics covered include the relation between culture and learning, class associated learning abilities, learning in an alien culture (e.g., Canadian Indians), learning in an alien language (bilingualism), and learning in handicapped groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Propositional reasoning by model.

Describes a new theory of propositional reasoning, that is, deductions depending on if, or, and, and not. The theory proposes that reasoning is a semantic process based on mental models. It assumes that people are able to maintain models of only a limited number of alternative states of affairs, and they accordingly use models representing as much information as possible in an implicit way. They represent a disjunctive proposition, such as "There is a circle or there is a triangle," by imagining initially 2 alternative possibilities: one in which there is a circle and the other in which there is a triangle. This representation can, if necessary, be fleshed out to yield an explicit representation of an exclusive or an inclusive disjunction. The theory elucidates all the robust phenomena of propositional reasoning. It also makes several novel predictions, which were corroborated by the results of 4 experiments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditional reasoning in children.

Conditional reasoning ability is analyzed in the context of Piaget's logical operational system. It is argued that facility in concrete operations is necessary and sufficient for competence in the simple syllogistic forms, though dealing with conditional statements in certain more complex contexts requires formal operations. Data from 3 studies are presented in support of these assertions. Using a total of 120 Ss in Grades 1–5, results of Exps I and II show that presentation of statements in a concrete conversational context elicited substantially more correct conditional reasoning than has been found in earlier studies. Results of Exp III, which used a total of 154 Ss in Grades 2, 4, 6, and 8, indicate that a distinction is drawn between comprehension that p (not p) entails the possibility of q (given If p, then q) and comprehension that q entails the possibility of p. The former is less difficult than the latter, and only the latter requires concrete operations. A methodological implication of these studies is that in the assessment of logical competence, results depend heavily on the exact manner of presentation, as well as on the specific logical operation being assessed. Implications for the theory of formal operations and for the study of traditional syllogistic reasoning are also discussed. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

IQ and reasoning complexity: The roles of experience.

In his commentary Reagan (1987) raises several methodological and interpretive concerns about conclusions of our study on handicapping expertise and IQ (Ceci & Liker, 1986b). In this article, we address these concerns and argue that our original conclusion that IQ is uncorrelated to the complexity and accuracy of racetrack handicapping continues to be a valid interpretation of our data. We discuss the implications of the negative correlation between IQ and years of horse-race experience and explain why the sampling procedures would not produce the type of selectional biases suggested by Reagan. Nonetheless, Reagan's commentary suggests an interesting hypothesis for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Meta-analogical transfer: Transfer between episodes of analogical reasoning.

Meta-analogical transfer (i.e., transfer due to forming an analogy between analogies) was demonstrated in 4 experiments. Results suggest that the basis of meta-analogical transfer was transfer of predicate mappings (mappings of the concepts used to represent analogies) between separate episodes of analogical reasoning. Episodes of letter-string analogy problem solving of the form "If abc were changed into abd, how would you change kji in the same way?" were used. In Experiment 1 participants generated solutions in 2 separate analogical reasoning episodes. Order of presentation effects provided evidence of transfer of predicate mappings. Experiments 2a and 2b reinforced these findings, demonstrating transfer when mappings for the 1st analogy were directly manipulated by having participants justify an answer to the 1st analogy. Experiment 3 demonstrated that a mapping of nonidentical predicates (successor to predecessor) can also be transferred. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditional reasoning and conditionalization.

In solving conditional reasoning problems, reasoners are assumed to compute the probability of the conclusion, conditionalizing first on the categorical premise, giving the knowledge-based component, and conditionalizing then on the conditional-statement premise, from which the assumption-based component is derived. Because reasoners find it difficult to compute the second-step conditionalization except when the conditional-statement premise is found to be related to the result of the first-step conditionalization as for modus ponens or, possibly, for modus tollens, the knowledge-based component generally dominates reasoning performance. After representing all the possible cases in which conditional-argument forms may appear, this approach was found to be consistent with the results from the 3 experiments reported in this study, whereas 2 alternative hypotheses account for only some of the results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)