At the onset of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) global pandemic, our interdisciplinary team hypothesized that a mathematical misconception--whole number bias (WNB)--contributed to beliefs that COVID-19 was less fatal than the flu. We created a brief online educational intervention for adults, leveraging evidence-based cognitive science…

Dual Process Theory has recently been applied to Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to suggest that reasoning by people with ASD and people with higher levels of ASD-like traits can be characterised by reduced intuitive and greater reflective processing. 26 adolescents and adults with ASD and 22 adolescent and adult controls completed an assessment of…

The potency of Pascual-Leone's M construct was demonstrated by experimental production of decalages on combinatorial reasoning tasks. Logical and perceptual task characteristics remained constant while the number of variables was varied so that processing demands, relative to processing capacities, were the same for subjects at each of three age…

Results showed that only 32 percent of adult female shoppers in a supermarket were able to use a proportional reasoning strategy to determine which of two sizes of a common item (size ratio 2:3) was the better buy. Performance declined when the ratio was more complex. (JMB)

Three paper-and-pencil formal operations tests were administered to groups of eighth graders and adults. These measures provided scores that indicated each subject's level of reasoning for three second-order operations: combinations, proportionality, and propositional logic. (JMB)

This experiment in reasoning attempted to discover why simple logic tasks cause problems. An initial group investigation preceded the experiment, which tested two hypotheses: that subjects presented with a "four-card" problem make irrational responses, and that successful completion of a programed text will reduce irrational responses.…

The present paper describes results of a study that investigated 209 bilingual Puerto Rican college students' ability to solve verbal deductive reasoning problems administered in Spanish and English in relation to their reading comprehension skills in either language. A series of confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the data on reasoning and…

Children's ability to infer consequences from sentences automatically was assessed in two cued recall experiments. Seven- and eight-year-old children and adults served as subjects. (JMB)

Even among individuals operating at Piaget's highest cognitive level (Formal Operations Stage) there is a range of behaviors on important cognitive characteristics. Various substages and their performance criteria are suggested. (JD)

The two groups were not significantly different on tests of lipreading and reception of signed English, but the hearing Ss were superior on tests of nonverbal reasoning and perceptual speed. Hearing Ss were greatly superior on a test of verbal reasoning. (Author/DLS)

Three experiments examined strategies for solving suppositional deductions to compare control structures proposed by rule theory and model theory. Puzzles were based on assertors who may be truth-tellers and their assertions about their truth-telling status. Reasoners made backward and forward inferences, found generating suppositions difficult,…

A theory of deductive reasoning is presented for inferences that depend on multiply quantified premises. It is argued that reasoners construct mental models based on their knowledge of the meaning of the quantifiers. Three experiments, with 54 university students and adults, corroborated the theory. (SLD)

A progress report of work done in formulating a theory of deductive reasoning is given. Models for the three main kinds of syllogisms that have been investigated by students of human reasoning (categorical, conditional, and linear) have been formulated and tested. The theory and data for each of the three kinds of syllogisms is summarized. Some…

Examines the findings of 53 studies of sex differences in propositional logic, combinatorial reasoning, and proportional reasoning tasks. Finds sex differences for the latter two tasks to be vulnerable to Rosenthal's "file drawer" problem and effect size to be small for all tasks. Discusses possible explanations for sex differences in…

Depending on age and the demands of the task, people may use different processing strategies in object categorization. Three-year-olds used a wholistic approach with strong effects of object typicality on three categorization tasks. Older children and adults showed differential effects of typicality, suggesting various strategies including…