Preadolescents Solve Natural Syllogisms Proficiently

Politzer, Guy; Bosc-Miné, Christelle; Sander, Emmanuel

doi:10.1111/cogs.12365

Cited by 7 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(35 reference statements)

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“…In the broader context of cognitive science on reasoning, can the result that topo-spatial representations were effective in reasoning with multiple quantifiers provide some more general implications? The findings of effective expression of tasks can contribute to task naturalisation in the psychology of reasoning (Politzer, Bosc-Miné & Sander, 2017). If the aim of the current research is measuring people's actual logical (not puzzle solving) capability, tasks involving inference, as opposed to just interpretation, should be set for participants.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…9 Our experiment suggests that single quantifiers should be expressed as spatial relations and multiple quantifiers as topological relations, rather than both types being expressed as topological relations. However, according to Politzer et al (2017), natural tasks of categorical syllogism consist of one premise rather than two premises. This setting is realised by the fact that the existing knowledge of meaningful terms used in the statements can bridge the gap of an unstated premise.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Human inference beyond syllogisms: an approach using external graphical representations

2018

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Research in psychology about reasoning has often been restricted to relatively inexpressive statements involving quantifiers (e.g. syllogisms). This is limited to situations that typically do not arise in practical settings, like ontology engineering. In order to provide an analysis of inference, we focus on reasoning tasks presented in external graphic representations where statements correspond to those involving multiple quantifiers and unary and binary relations. Our experiment measured participants' performance when reasoning with two notations. The first notation used topological constraints to convey information via node-link diagrams (i.e. graphs). The second used topological and spatial constraints to convey information (Euler diagrams with additional graph-like syntax). We found that topo-spatial representations were more effective for inferences than topological representations alone. Reasoning with statements involving multiple quantifiers was harder than reasoning with single quantifiers in topological representations, but not in topo-spatial representations. These findings are compared to those in sentential reasoning tasks.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human inference beyond syllogisms: an approach using external graphical representations

2018

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“…Therefore in the park, all the roses are frozen (Politzer et al, 2017(Politzer et al, , p. 1040 The three main differences between the abstract problem in (1) and the ecologically valid problem in (2) are: (i) the content of the premises, (ii) the inclusion in a context that renders the syllogism somewhat relevant and, (iii) the omission of one of the premises (here, all roses are flowers), which is taken as part of the participant's background knowledge (syllogisms with such an implicit premise are called enthymematic). These ecologically valid syllogisms significantly improved participants' performance, allowing 11-year-olds to perform as well as adults, and significantly better than same-age children on less ecologically valid versions of the same syllogisms (Politzer et al, 2017).…”

Section: And Marie Repliedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These studies, which used tasks that appear closely related to the control condition of Politzer et al (2017), have found instead activity in a lateral frontoparietal network that includes the posterior parietal cortex, the inferior and middle frontal gyrus, and the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (Prado, Chadha, & Booth, 2011). Thus, this literature provides relatively little support for the idea that argumentative reasoning involves the mPFC or other regions involved in ToM.…”

Section: And Marie Repliedmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The neural bases of argumentative reasoning

et al. 2020

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Most reasoning tasks used in behavioral and neuroimaging studies are abstract, triggering slow, effortful processes. By contrast, most of everyday life reasoning is fast and effortless, as when we exchange arguments in conversation. Recent behavioral studies have shown that reasoning tasks with the same underlying logic can be solved much more easily if they are embedded in an argumentative context. In the present article, we study the neural bases of this type of everyday, argumentative reasoning. Such reasoning is both a social and a metarepresentational process, suggesting it should share some mechanisms, and thus some neural bases, with other social, metarepresentational process such as pragmatics, metacognition, or theory of mind. To isolate the neural bases of argumentative reasoning, we measured fMRI activity of participants who read the same statement presented either as the conclusion of an argument, or as an assertion. We found that conclusions of arguments were associated with greater activity than assertions in a region of the medial prefrontal cortex that was identified in quantitative meta-analyses of studies on theory of mind. This study shows that it is possible to use more ecologically valid tasks to study the neural bases of reasoning, and that using such tasks might point to different neural bases than those observed with the more abstract and artificial tasks typically used in the neuroscience of reasoning. Specifically, we speculate that reasoning in an argumentative context might rely on mechanisms supporting metarepresentational processes in the medial prefrontal cortex.

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