Search PubMed⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “Reasoning”

Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 523 records · Page 29Linked to original sources
PubMedDate not supplied

Using absolute and relative reasoning in the prediction of the potential metabolism of xenobiotics.

To be useful, a system which predicts the metabolic fate of a chemical should predict the more likely metabolites rather than every possibility. Reasoning can be used to prioritize biotransformations, but a real biochemical domain is complex and cannot be fully defined in terms of the likelihood of events. This paper describes the combined use of two models for reasoning under uncertainty in a working system, METEOR-one model deals with absolute reasoning and the second with relative reasoning.

Cyclohexanols↗
PubMed2006

Effects of belief and logic on syllogistic reasoning: Eye-movement evidence for selective processing models.

Studies of syllogistic reasoning have demonstrated a nonlogical tendency for people to endorse more believable conclusions than unbelievable ones. This belief bias effect is more dominant on invalid syllogisms than valid ones, giving rise to a logic by belief interaction. We report an experiment in which participants' eye movements were recorded in order to provide insights into the nature and time course of the reasoning processes associated with manipulations of conclusion validity and believability. Our main dependent measure was people's inspection times for syllogistic premises, and we tested predictions deriving from three contemporary mental-models accounts of the logic by belief interaction. Results supported recent "selective processing" theories of belief bias (e.g., Evans, 2000; Klauer, Musch, & Naumer, 2000), which assume that the believability of a conclusion biases model construction processes, rather than biasing the search for falsifying models (e.g., Oakhill & Johnson-Laird, 1985) or a response stage of reasoning arising from subjective uncertainty (e.g., Quayle & Ball, 2000). We conclude by suggesting that the eye-movement analyses in reasoning research may provide a useful adjunct to other process-tracing techniques such as verbal protocol analysis.

Culture↗
PubMed1997

Children's moral and ecological reasoning about the Prince William Sound oil spill.

Sixty 2nd, 5th, and 8th graders were interviewed on their moral and ecological reasoning about the 1990 Exxon Valdez oil spill that occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Results showed that children understood that the oil spill negatively affected the local Alaskan shoreline, marine life, fishermen, recreationists, and the oil company. Children cared that harm occurred to the shoreline and marine life and conceived of both types of harm as violating a moral obligation. Fifth and 8th graders, compared with 2nd graders, used a greater proportion of anthropocentric reasoning (e.g., that nature ought to be protected to protect human welfare) and biocentric reasoning (e.g., that nature has intrinsic value, rights, or a teleology). Discussion focuses on how studying children's reasoning about nature not only extends the bounds of what counts as moral--to include a relationship with the natural world--but also provides a unique means by which to conduct basic research on children's moral development.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Adolescents' reasoning about exclusion from social groups.

Ninth- and 11th-grade students (N = 379) were surveyed regarding their evaluations of excluding someone from a social group solely on the basis of his or her social reference group membership. Individuals evaluated exclusion in ambiguous and nonambiguous situations. Judgments and reasoning about exclusion were compared with judgments and reasoning about a more prototypically moral situation (denial of resources). Overall, participants evaluated exclusion as less wrong than denial of resources and used fewer moral and more conventional reasons to justify their judgments. Participants relied more on their group knowledge or stereotypes in evaluating ambiguous situations and more on their personal knowledge in evaluating nonambiguous situations. Age- and gender-related differences in evaluations, reasoning, and use of stereotypes were also found.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1994

Reasoning about food and contamination.

This article examines strategies that are used to reason about food and contamination. In Experiment 1, Ss refrained from choosing a substance that had been given a "poison" label when the intent of the labeler was ambiguous or malicious but preferred this substance when a rationale was provided that dispelled the implication that there once might have been contaminants present. Experiment 2 was designed to compare the effects of safety on conditional reasoning in food and food-irrelevant contexts. When the safety issue was relevant to food in the form of contamination, subjects were most likely to use formal logic in reasoning. A similar pattern of responses was found in Experiment 3 on tasks for which subjects' ratings of their experience of contexts were matched for plausibility, experience, and danger. The results are discussed in terms of an adaptive constraint that facilitates rationality in reasoning within the food domain.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Knowing what you'll do: effects of analyzing reasons on self-prediction.

Analyzing the reasons why one would or would not act in a certain way was predicted to increase the perceived likelihood of the behavior and to lower the accuracy of the self-predictions. In 3 studies, college students predicted whether they would act in friendly or unfriendly ways toward an acquaintance. Those asked to analyze reasons why they would or would not perform the behaviors, as compared with no-analyze controls, were more likely to say they would perform the behaviors, showing a confirmation bias; made less accurate predictions, because analyzing reasons changed their predictions but not their actual behavior; and were more overconfident, because analyzing reasons lowered accuracy but not confidence. Each of these effects was especially pronounced when people's initial liking for the target person was different from the valence of the behavior they were predicting.

Behavior↗
PubMed1996

Moral and social reasoning and perspective taking in later life: a longitudinal study.

In this study 27 older adults (ages 64-80) and 23 middle-aged adults (ages 35-54) were tested for moral stage, integrative complexity of social reasoning, and perspective-taking levels twice over a 4-year period. Moral reasoning stage levels did not change over time for either age group. Older adults, but not the middle-aged, showed a significant decline over time in level of moral perspective taking. Complexity of reasoning about several interpersonal social issues declined modestly in both age groups. More social-cognitive support, a higher education level, and better self-reported health were all found to be protective factors in forestalling declines in mature adults' sociocognitive reasoning, consistent with other research on cognitive measures in later life.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Neural substrates of mathematical reasoning: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study of neocortical activation during performance of the necessary arithmetic operations test.

Brain activation was examined using functional magnetic resonance imaging during mathematical problem solving in 7 young healthy participants. Problems were selected from the Necessary Arithmetic Operations Test (NAOT; R. B. Ekstrom, J. W. French, H. H. Harman, & D. Dermen, 1976). Participants solved 3 types of problems: 2-operation problems requiring mathematical reasoning and text processing, 1-operation problems requiring text processing but minimal mathematical reasoning, and 0-operation problems requiring minimal text processing and controlling sensorimotor demands of the NAOT problems. Two-operation problems yielded major activations in bilateral frontal regions similar to those found in other problem-solving tasks, indicating that the processes mediated by these regions subserve many forms of reasoning. Findings suggest a dissociation in mathematical problem solving between reasoning, mediated by frontal cortex, and text processing, mediated by temporal cortex.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

The consolidation/transition model in moral reasoning development.

The consolidation/transition model conceptualizes development as entailing a cyclical pattern of alternating consolidation and transition phases and posits that stage advance is predicted by a specific distribution of reasoning across stages indicative of disequilibrium (more reasoning above than below the mode, with a high degree of mixture). The validity of this model was examined in the context of moral reasoning development with the use of standard statistical techniques as well as Bayesian techniques that can better account for classification error. In this longitudinal study. 64 children and adolescents participated in 5 annual administrations of the Moral Judgment Interview. The distribution of their reasoning across stages was used to predict subsequent development. The results support the hypotheses regarding cyclical patterns of change and predictors of stage transition and demonstrate the utility of Bayesian techniques for evaluating developmental change.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Reasoning, emotions, and delusional conviction in psychosis.

The aim of the study was to elucidate the factors contributing to the severity and persistence of delusional conviction. One hundred participants with current delusions, recruited for a treatment trial of psychological therapy (PRP trial), were assessed at baseline on measures of reasoning, emotions, and dimensions of delusional experience. Reasoning biases (belief inflexibility, jumping to conclusions, and extreme responding) were found to be present in one half of the sample. The hypothesis was confirmed that reasoning biases would be related to delusional conviction. There was evidence that belief inflexibility mediated the relationship between jumping to conclusions and delusional conviction. Emotional states were not associated with the reasoning processes investigated. Anxiety, but not depression, made an independent contribution to delusional conviction.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Differential access to information and anticipated group interaction: impact on individual reasoning.

Two studies examined the impact of relative differences in access to information and anticipated group interaction on individual reasoning. On 2 different reasoning tasks (P. C. Wason's [1966] selection task and D. Kahneman & A. Tversky's [1973] lawyer-engineer problem), participants sensing that they knew more in anticipation of group interaction or knew less when not anticipating interaction were less susceptible to typical cognitive biases demonstrated by these tasks. Study 2 also showed that the effect of these social contexts was contingent on the task presentation format. Thus, knowing more in anticipation of group interaction and knowing less when not anticipating group interaction seemingly compensated for task features that enhance suboptimal reasoning strategies. These results illustrate the importance of the social context in which reasoning is situated and are discussed in terms of cognitive tuning, social comparison, and social motivations.

Access to Information↗
PubMed2006

Pursuing goals for us: relationally autonomous reasons in long-term goal pursuit.

People pursue goals for a variety of reasons, including reasons that take into account close relationships (termed relationally autonomous reasons, or RARs). Two longitudinal studies examined the degree to which relational self-construal, RARs, and personally autonomous reasons (PARs) predicted goal attainment. In Study 1, 166 participants rated 7 goals on several goal outcomes at 2 sessions. Results revealed that self-construal was positively associated with RARs and that RARs predicted goal attainment, controlling for PARs. Study 2 (N = 177) added a 3rd follow-up to the Study 1 design, and results showed perceived progress toward one's goals predicted enhanced RARs but not enhanced PARs. Both studies showed that RARs are an effective motivational component in goal pursuit and attainment.

Achievement↗
PubMed1999

Naive probability: a mental model theory of extensional reasoning.

This article outlines a theory of naive probability. According to the theory, individuals who are unfamiliar with the probability calculus can infer the probabilities of events in an extensional way: They construct mental models of what is true in the various possibilities. Each model represents an equiprobable alternative unless individuals have beliefs to the contrary, in which case some models will have higher probabilities than others. The probability of an event depends on the proportion of models in which it occurs. The theory predicts several phenomena of reasoning about absolute probabilities, including typical biases. It correctly predicts certain cognitive illusions in inferences about relative probabilities. It accommodates reasoning based on numerical premises, and it explains how naive reasoners can infer posterior probabilities without relying on Bayes's theorem. Finally, it dispels some common misconceptions of probabilistic reasoning.

Cognition↗
PubMed2003

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.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Racial differences in self-disclosure of suicidal ideation and reasons for living: implications for training.

Racial differences in suicidal self-disclosure and reasons for living were investigated in 2 separate studies. In Study 1, a random sample of archival client and therapist intake data from a university counseling center for 1 year was examined, and results indicate that ethnic minority clients do not self-disclose suicidal ideation as readily as their nonethnic minority peers. In addition, a significantly higher number of ethnic minority clients were deemed "hidden ideators" because their suicidal ideation only became evident when a counselor performed a suicide risk assessment. Only 1 of the 36 ethnic minority clients with suicidal ideation in the sample voluntarily self-disclosed this ideation at intake without an assessment by the therapist. Study 2 used the Reasons for Living Inventory (RFL) and compared African American and European American college students from an introductory psychology course. The RFL is a useful instrument to compare potential race differences in reasons people report for choosing not to kill themselves, because it does not require respondents to self-disclose (or to have) current suicidal ideation. The results from Study 2 indicate European Americans report fewer reasons for choosing not to kill themselves than their African American peers and that African Americans scored significantly higher than European Americans on the moral objections and survival and coping beliefs subscales of the RFL. Implications for training counselors in suicide risk assessment, prevention, and treatment with ethnic minorities are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2005

Reasons for tooth extraction in four general dental practices in South Wales.

Tooth retention has been one of the main aims of oral care which in turn could have contributed to the social oral health divide. To investigate this issue further, data collected for a group audit was used to study the reasons for tooth extraction for patients attending for routine treatment at four dental practices. The practices served populations in areas with different levels of deprivation in South Wales. In 558 teeth extracted over 417 visits, the reasons for extractions were: caries 59%, periodontal disease 29.1%, pre-prosthetic 1%, wisdom teeth 4.6%, orthodontic 5.5%, trauma 1.2%, patient request 2.4% and 6.2% other reason. The number of extraction visits per day within the group of dental surgeons varied with three practitioners performing more than three extraction visits per day while one practitioner had only 0.51. These reasons did not significantly depend on levels of deprivation. However, significantly more teeth were extracted for caries in the most deprived group in comparison to the least deprived. Therefore, could there be a case for appropriate extractions in the quest for equitable care?

Adolescent↗
PubMed1999

Intracavernosal therapy for erectile failure--impact of treatment and reasons for drop-out and dissatisfaction.

OBJECTIVES: To examine the impact of intracavernosal therapy on libido, ejaculatory control, quality of life and treatment dependency in men with erectile failure. Furthermore to assess the drop-out rate and reasons for dissatisfaction with the technique. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Questionnaires were sent to 1116 subjects with erectile failure who had previously elected to use intracavernosal therapy in the period 1995-1997. RESULTS: The response rate was 72.5%. The majority of erections lasted 30-60 min, 10-20% of the erections were considered unsatisfactory for intercourse and 15% of subjects reported erections lasting longer than 5 h on at least 10% of the occasions. Bleeding at the injection site occurred in 60% on at least 10% of the occasions and various degrees of deformation of the penis shaft were reported by 10%. The latter was related to the age of the subject and not the type of medication employed. Forty percent experienced at least partially improved control over ejaculation and almost 50% experienced some degree of increase in libido. One quarter retained penile rigidity after ejaculation but this was age-dependent. In those satisfied with intracavernosal treatment, 80% admitted that it had improved the quality of their lives. Sixty percent did not feel that their dependency on intracavernosal treatment had lessened during the treatment period. Approximately 40% of subjects admitted to dropping out of the programme, the majority within the first six months. The age of the subject did not influence the decision and the type of medication or the mode of injection had only a minor impact on drop-out rate. Of those currently using IC therapy, 87% were either fully or partly satisfied with this form of treatment. The corresponding figure for those discontinuing treatment was 58%. Dissatisfaction was higher in the younger age groups and could not be clearly related to the mode of injection. The major reasons for drop out or dissatisfaction were inadequate penile rigidity, the expense of the treatment, penile discomfort and the lack of spontaneity it necessitated. Penile discomfort was more associated with younger age groups, whilst an inadequate response to medication was more often experienced by men over 60 y. Deformation of the penile shaft was observed in 5% of those dissatisfied with IC therapy and was four times more often reported by those over 70 compared to subjects younger than 40 y. In 6% of cases, a return of spontaneous erections was given as reason for drop-out. This was more often associated with younger subjects. In 16% of the subjects, the partner had expressed dissatisfaction with the technique primarily because of inadequate rigidity, lack of spontaneity or the complicated nature of the treatment. CONCLUSIONS: Intracavernosal treatment for erection failure is associated with side-effects such as penile fibrosis and bleeding at the injection site but has advantages including increased libido, an increase in the quality of life and ejaculatory control. Only a small proportion of men reduce their dependency on the technique with time. The therapy has a relatively high attrition rate. In many cases, the reasons for subject and partner dissatisfaction are potentially correctable e.g. by altering the medication used, by the use of injector devices or by obtaining financial support for IC medication from medical welfare.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Reasons for withdrawing treatment in patients receiving intensive care.

We studied the frequency with which treatment was withdrawn in intensive care patients and the primary reason for reaching the decision. The medical records of patients having had active treatment withdrawn between August 1992 and February 1996 inclusive were reviewed. Patients were classified into an imminent death group consisting of those expected to die, a qualitative group who had treatment withdrawn on quality of life considerations and a lethal conditions group who had associated disease that precluded long-term survival. There were 1745 patients admitted, of whom 338 (19.4%) died in ICU. In 220 patients death followed the withdrawal of treatment (12.6% of all ICU admissions), 203 dying on ICU (60% of ICU deaths) and a further 17 soon after discharge to a ward. The primary reason for treatment withdrawal was imminent death in 45% of patients, qualitative considerations in 50% and lethal conditions in 5%. The reason varied significantly depending on the patient's age. Treatment is withdrawn commonly in ICU, the primary reason being quality of life considerations as often as because death is the expected outcome.

APACHE↗