Biomedical subjects

Wim De Neys

Publications and source records attributed to Wim De Neys.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

The difference between generating counter examples and using them during reasoning.

The aim of this article is to provide insight into the types of long-term knowledge that are used for solving causal conditional inferences. Two taxonomies were constructed to map the types of counter example. The available counter examples are traditionally probed via a counter example generation task. We observed that there are some significant differences in the types of counter example retrieved in the reasoning task versus the generation task. The generation task can be used for predicting answers that sprout from a reasoning process that takes counter example into account, but some participants use a different reasoning process in which the available semantic information is not used as contrasting evidence. Nonetheless, we found that the results of the generation task validly predicted the proportion of inferences accepted as well as the number of counter examples used during reasoning.

Classification↗

PubMed2003

Inference suppression and semantic memory retrieval: every counterexample counts.

Reasoning with conditionals involving causal content is known to be affected by retrieval of counterexamples from semantic memory. In this study we examined the characteristics of this search process in everyday conditional reasoning. In Experiment 1 we manipulated the number (zero to four) of explicitly presented counterexamples (alternative causes or disabling conditions) for causal conditionals. In Experiment 2, using a generation pretest, we measured the number of counterexamples participants could retrieve for a set of causal conditionals. One month after the pretest, participants were presented a reasoning task with the same conditionals. The experiments indicated that acceptance of modus ponens linearly decreased with every additionally retrieved disabler, whereas affirmation of the consequent acceptance linearly decreased as a function of the number of retrieved alternatives. Results for denial of the antecedent and modus tollens were less clear. The findings show that the search process does not necessarily stop after retrieval of a single counterexample and that every additional counterexample has an impact on the inference acceptance.

Cognition↗

PubMed2002

Causal conditional reasoning and semantic memory retrieval: a test of the semantic memory framework.

This study tested and refined a framework that proposes a mechanism for retrieving alternative causes and disabling conditions (Cummins, 1995) during reasoning. Experiment 1 examined the relation between different factors affecting retrieval. The test revealed high correlations between the number of possible alternative causes or disabling conditions and their strength of association and plausibility. Experiment 2 explored the hypothesis that due to a more extended search process, conditional inferences would last longer when many alternative causes or disabling conditions were available. Affirmation of the consequent (AC) and modus ponens (MP) latencies showed the hypothesized pattern. Denial of the antecedent (DA) and modus tollens (MT) inferences did not show latency effects. The experiment also identified an effect of the number of disabling conditions on AC and DA acceptance. Experiment 3 measured efficiency of disabler retrieval by a limited time, disabler generation task. As predicted, better disabler retrieval was related to lower acceptance of the MP and MT inferences.

Humans↗