Constructive processes in linear order problems revealed by sentence study times.

Abstract

The time spent studying sentences that described the pairwise relations comprising linear orders to be constructed was measured. The results were consistent with the theory of constructive processes described earlier by Foos, Smith, Sabol, and Mynatt, except when the first two relations presented had no elements in common. In this situation, subjects were shown to possess two strategies for representing the order information in memory, depending on the form and content of the sentences. When the elements of the ordering were easy to rehearse and were presented in an unvarying sentence frame describing an abstract relationship, the two relations were apparently maintained by rehearsal in a single linear array. When the elements were easy to visualize and were presented in a sentence frame with a varying relation word that described a concrete relation, most subjects appeared to use a two-dimensional mental image. A modified theory in which the order of processing information in memory depends on the representational strategy was shown to account for study times under both input conditions.Previous studies have shown that the Example 1, below, as they were after order of presentation of the relationships hearing Example 2 (cf. Potts, 1972). in a linear order can have a considerable Example 1 impact on subjects' success in constructing T he farmer is taller than the doctor, the order. For example, Smith and FoosThe doctor is taller than the soldier. (1975) found that subjects were nearlyThe soldier is taller than the teacher, twice as likely to report the correct ordering Rvamtole 2 from tallest to shortest after hearing ^, ,,. . . n .. ., . , 5 UnTve'rsS'of'Tdedo 18 **" ^ ^ ^"^ * *" tive P roCeSS6S P r °POSed bv F °OS ' Smith ' Requests for reprints should be sent to Barbee T. Sabo1 ' and M V natt < 1976 ) tO aCC °"nt f ? F

Is model construction open to strategic decisions? An exploration in the field of linear reasoning

“…Previous research (e.g., Mynatt & Smith, 1977;Oakhill & Johnson-Laird, 1984;Potts, 1972) has shown that reasoning performance is better when the premises are presented in a continuous order (e.g., AB, BC, CD) than when they are presented in a discontinuous (e.g., AB, CD, BC) or in a semi-continuous order (e.g., BC, CD, AB) (but see Ehrlich & Johnson-Laird, 1982). For the discontinuous order, this is due to the fact that up to a certain point (in the example: up to the second premise), no integrated representation can be constructed (e.g., Potts, 1972).…”

“…All problems consisted of five premises, linking six objects/ subjects with the temporal relation "before" (constant sentence frame, Mynatt & Smith, 1977). The premises were isotropic: the second term of each premise reoccurred as the first term in the next premise.…”

“…Because the acronym and the rehearsal strategy have only been applied to one-model problems (see also Mynatt & Smith, 1977), it was not clear whether both strategies were also suited to encode two-model problems into an isomeric (Schaeken & Van der Henst, 2002) or an annotated model . Therefore, we also included a control condition in which reasoners had to solve the same problems as in the experimental condition but without strategy instruction.…”

“…In order to avoid these problems, we have decided to "teach" reasoners two model-construction strategies, of which the type of mental tokens varies and, at the same time, can be distinguished by the verbalisations reasoners make during the positioning of the tokens. For this, we were inspired by the work of Mynatt and Smith (1977). In their study, participants received relational reasoning problems, describing a one-dimensional relation between premise terms (linear reasoning problems), of which they had to recall the ordering of the terms.…”

The role of memory in the construction of linear orderings

“…Performance is affected by the order in which information is presented (Foos, Smith, Sabol, & Mynatt, 1976), the strategy that participants adopt in representing presented information (Mynatt & Smith, 1977), the completeness of the underlying ordering (Foos, 1980), the number of items in the ordering (Foos, 1980), the relationship between a sentence adjective and an item's placement (Potts & Scholz, 1975), and various combinations of the above (Foos, 1980). The present paper examines the effects produced by presentation order in an attempt to determine whether these effects can be attributed to the need for different processing for different inputs or simply to differences in the amount of information that must be held in store pending recall.…”