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Results for “Reasoning”

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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1998

Knowledge about smoking, reasons for smoking, and reasons for wishing to quit in inner-city African Americans.

OBJECTIVE: To determine knowledge about smoking, reasons for smoking, and reasons for wishing to quit and the association of these variables with abstinence at ten weeks and six months. DESIGN: Descriptive study and longitudinal intervention. SETTING: Inner-city public hospital clinics. PARTICIPANTS: 410 African-American cigarette smokers interested in quitting were surveyed at baseline and subsequently enrolled into a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial of the transdermal nicotine patch. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Descriptive information about smoking knowledge, reasons for smoking, and reasons for wishing to quit, and association of these variables with abstinence at 10 weeks and 6 months. RESULTS: Among the 410 patients randomized, mean age was 48 years, 61% were female, 41% had less than a high school education, 51% had an annual household income less than $8,000, and the average number of cigarettes smoked a day was twenty. The average number of questions answered correctly was nine out of eleven (84%). The most cited reason for smoking was relaxation/tension reduction and the least cited were stimulation and handling of the cigarette. Ninety-nine percent of patients stated they wished to quit for health reasons. Knowledge, reasons for smoking, and reasons for wishing to quit were not significantly associated with 10-week or 6-month abstinence. CONCLUSIONS: In this group of inner-city African-American smokers, knowledge about cigarette smoking was high. Reasons for smoking were related to relaxation, craving, and pleasure, and reasons for wishing to quit were largely health-related. Knowledge, reasons for smoking, and reasons for wishing to quit were not associated with 10 week or 6 month abstinence. Since knowledge about smoking is already high, future efforts should be directed at promoting cessation through proven behavioral and pharmacological approaches, rather than didactic patient education.

Administration, Cutaneous↗

PubMed2004

Domains of deontic reasoning: resolving the discrepancy between the cognitive and moral reasoning literatures.

Deontic reasoning has been studied in two subfields of psychology: the cognitive and moral reasoning literatures. These literatures have drawn different conclusions about the nature of deontic reasoning. The consensus within the cognitive reasoning literature is that deontic reasoning is a unitary phenomenon, whereas the consensus within the moral reasoning literature is that there are different subdomains of deontic reasoning. We present evidence from a series of experiments employing the methods of both literatures suggesting that people make a systematic distinction between two types of deontic rule: social contracts and precautions. The results call into question the prevailing opinion in the cognitive reasoning literature and provide further support for both an evolutionary view of deontic reasoning and the more domain-specific perspective found in the moral reasoning literature.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Dual processing in reasoning: two systems but one reasoner.

Human reasoning has been characterized as an interplay between an automatic belief-based system and a demanding logic-based reasoning system. The present study tested a fundamental claim about the nature of individual differences in reasoning and the processing demands of both systems. Participants varying in working memory capacity performed a reasoning task while their executive resources were burdened with a secondary task. Results were consistent with the dual-process claim: The executive burden hampered correct reasoning when the believability of a conclusion conflicted with its logical validity, but not when beliefs cued the correct response. However, although participants with high working memory spans performed better than those with lower spans in cases of a conflict, all reasoners showed similar effects of load. The findings support the idea that there are two reasoning systems with differential processing demands, but constitute evidence against qualitative individual differences in the human reasoning machinery.

Cognition↗

PubMed2007

Reasoning and dyslexia: a spatial strategy may impede reasoning with visually rich information.

Bacon, Handley, and Newstead (2003, 2004), have presented evidence for individual differences in reasoning strategies, with most people seeming to represent and manipulate problem information using either a verbal or a spatial strategy. There is also evidence that individuals with dyslexia are inclined to conceptualise information in a visuo-spatial, rather than a verbal, way (e.g. von Károlyi et al., 2003). If so, we might expect a higher proportion of individuals with dyslexia to be spatial reasoners, compared with individuals who do not have dyslexia. The study reported here directly compared strategies reported by these two groups of participants on a syllogistic reasoning task. Moreover, problem content was manipulated so that reasoning across concrete and abstract materials could be compared. The findings suggest that whilst most individuals without dyslexia use a verbal strategy, reasoners with dyslexia do tend to adopt a spatial approach, though their performance is impaired with visually concrete materials. However, when reasoning with more abstract content, they perform comparably with non-dyslexic controls. The paper discusses these results in the light of recent research which has suggested that visual images may impede reasoning, and considers how individuals with dyslexia may differ from other reasoners.

Adult↗

PubMed1996

Language and Operations in Children's Class Inclusion Reasoning: The Operational Semantic Theory of Reasoning

In this article we critique two prominent theories of reasoning-mental logic and mental models-and argue that reasoning does not consist of either applying logical rules or constructing mental models. Instead, we propose an operational semantic theory of reasoning, according to which reasoning is based on children's operational understanding of key terms in a given problem. We then go on to consider an important recent developmental theory of reasoning, fuzzy-trace theory. In order to illustrate the view of reasoning proposed here we report a study of class inclusion. Dramatic differences in class inclusion performance were found as the result of linguistic context; performance was significantly higher when an explicit request for a subclass comparison preceded the class inclusion question as compared to a standard condition when the class inclusion question alone was asked. This was the case, however, only when the prior subclass comparison question referred to the same dimensions as the class inclusion question and not when irrelevant subclasses were referred to. Children's performance was also better when they sorted the materials into the supraordinate class as compared to the subclasses, but not when the experimenter sorted them for the child. These effects due to the operational and linguistic manipulations are discussed in terms of a general operational semantic theory of reasoning.

Journal Article↗

PubMed1996

Reasoning from memory: a lifespan inquiry into the necessity of remembering when reasoning about class inclusion.

In the current experiment, we evaluated the relationship between reasoning and remembering across the lifespan (10-, 13-, 15-, 23-, and 67-year-olds) using color and number class-inclusion tasks. Subjects made judgments when memory load or information load was either high or low. Reading latency, choice latency, and choice accuracy data were collected and analyzed using formal models that partitioned memory and reasoning as well as type of reasoning strategy. The results showed that: (1) study skills, as indexed by reading latency, were sophisticated across the lifespan; (2) the difference between color and number choice latencies increased with age; (3) reasonably consistent effects were obtained as a function of increasing memory load, with the quality of both reasoning and remembering being adversely affected; (4) different effects were obtained at each age as a function of increasing information load; and (5) the major developmental trend across the lifespan was a tradeoff between class-inclusion and subclass-subclass forms of reasoning. A number of extant theoretical approaches were discussed, none of which were able to account for variations in class-inclusion performance across the lifespan. What was clear, however, was that memory-reasoning dependencies must be incorporated into any comprehensive theory of cognitive development across the lifespan.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1991

Clinical reasoning in medicine compared with clinical reasoning in occupational therapy.

This article highlights some observations made in the American Occupational Therapy Association/American Occupational Therapy Foundation Clinical Reasoning Study, an ethnographic study of 14 occupational therapists working in a large teaching hospital. Concepts and premises that frequently appear in the clinical reasoning in medicine literature are discussed and compared and contrasted to observations and interpretations made of the practice and reasoning strategies of the occupational therapists who were participants in the Clinical Reasoning Study. It is postulated that similarities in the reasoning strategies of the members of the two professions are a result of use of the scientific model that calls for hypothetical reasoning. Differences, it is proposed, are accounted for by the difference in the particular focus, goals, and tasks of the two professions and the nature of the practice in those arenas. Five hypotheses are proposed as questions for further research in clinical reasoning in occupational therapy.

Clinical Competence↗

PubMed2006

Domain-general contributions to social reasoning: theory of mind and deontic reasoning re-explored.

Using older adults and dual-task interference, we examined performance on two social reasoning tasks: theory of mind (ToM) tasks and versions of the deontic selection task involving social contracts and hazardous conditions. In line with performance accounts of social reasoning, evidence from both aging and the dual-task method suggested that domain-general resources contribute to performance of these tasks. Specifically, older adults were impaired relative to younger adults on all types of social reasoning tasks tested; performance varied as a function of the demands these tasks placed on domain-general resources. Moreover, in younger adults, simultaneous performance of a working memory task interfered with younger adults' performance on both types of social reasoning tasks; here too, the magnitude of the interference effect varied with the processing demands of each task. Limits placed on social reasoning by executive functions contribute a great deal to performance, even in old age and in healthy younger adults under conditions of divided attention. The role of potentially non-modular and modular contributions to social reasoning is discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed1997

The seats of reason? An imaging study of deductive and inductive reasoning.

We carried out a neuroimaging study to test the neurophysiological predictions made by different cognitive models of reasoning. Ten normal volunteers performed deductive and inductive reasoning tasks while their regional cerebral blood flow pattern was recorded using [15O]H2O PET imaging. In the control condition subjects semantically comprehended sets of three sentences. In the deductive reasoning condition subjects determined whether the third sentence was entailed by the first two sentences. In the inductive reasoning condition subjects reported whether the third sentence was plausible given the first two sentences. The deduction condition resulted in activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann areas 45, 47). The induction condition resulted in activation of a large area comprised of the left medial frontal gyrus, the left cingulate gyrus, and the left superior frontal gyrus (Brodmann areas 8, 9, 24, 32). Induction was distinguished from deduction by the involvement of the medial aspect of the left superior frontal gyrus (Brodmann areas 8, 9). These results are consistent with cognitive models of reasoning that postulate different mechanisms for inductive and deductive reasoning and view deduction as a formal rule-based process.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

For all these reasons, I do...drink: a multilevel analysis of contextual reasons for drinking among Canadian undergraduates.

OBJECTIVE: Student drinking is largely related to the setting of the drinking occasion as well as to individual psychosocial characteristics. This article assesses the effect of the reasons for drinking on situational alcohol use above and beyond other environmental and individual factors. METHOD: The data were drawn from the Canadian Campus Survey, a national mail survey conducted in 1998 with a sample of 8,864 students in 18 universities. Each student provided information on up to five drinking occasions, resulting in 25,347 drinking occasions among 6,598 drinkers. At the individual level, this study focused on the university life experience. At the situational level, information about alcohol intake was recorded relative to why, when, where and with whom drinking occurred and the reasons for drinking. RESULTS: Our results show that the reasons for drinking explain 8.3% of the variance in individual alcohol intake per occasion at the individual level and 8.1% at the drinking occasion level. CONCLUSIONS: Reasons for drinking and the drinking setting together influence consumption. Moreover, reasons are context specific, because students drink for different reasons in different contexts. Thus, contextual motivational models may be more effective in helping one understand the various pathways to alcohol use and misuse.

Alcohol Drinking↗

PubMed1995

Reasoning about the referent of a picture versus reasoning about the picture as the referent: an effect of visual realism.

Research on picture perception and picture-based problem solving has generally considered the information that enables one to "see" and think about a picture's subject matter. However, people often reason about a picture or representation as the referent itself. The question addressed here is whether pictorial features themselves help determine when one reasons about the referent of an image, as with an engrossing movie, and when one reasons about the image in its own right, as with abstract art. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that pictures with relatively high fidelity to their referents lead people to think about those referents, whereas pictures with relatively low fidelity lead people to think about the picture as a referent. Subjects determined whether marks on the bottom and top boards of an open hinge would meet if the hinge were closed. Accuracy and latency results indicated that subjects who saw realistic displays simulated the physical behavior of the hinge through analog imagery. In contrast, subjects who saw schematic displays tended to reason about static features of the display such as line lengths and angles. The results demonstrate that researchers must be cautious when generalizing from reasoning about diagrammatic materials to reasoning about the referents themselves.

Adult↗

PubMed1997

Conditional reasoning and phobic fear: evidence for a fear-confirming reasoning pattern.

In two experiments we explored the role of subjects' reasoning performance in the persistence of phobic fear. More specifically, we investigated whether (phobic) subjects are prone to selectively search for danger-confirming information when asked to judge the validity of conditional rules in the context of general and phobic threats. In both experiments, participants were presented with Wason Selection Tasks (WST) pertaining to general and phobic threats. The WSTs contained safety rules (if P then no danger) and danger rules (if P then danger). In Experiment 1 participants were high (n = 20) and low (n = 20) spider fearful students, whereas in Experiment 2 participants were untreated (n = 38) and treated (n = 27) spider phobic women and a group of non-fearful controls (n = 27). Both experiments showed that in the context of general threat, subjects predominantly rely on confirming information regarding danger rules and on falsifying information regarding safety rules. This reasoning strategy was not particularly pronounced in high fear or phobic subjects. However, only clinically diagnosed spider phobics displayed a similar reasoning strategy in the context of phobia-relevant threats. Thus, the present data seem to suggest that the mere perception of threat is already sufficient to activate a danger-confirming reasoning strategy and in case of phobic threats such a reasoning pattern logically serves to maintain or even enhance phobic fears.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1999

Schizophrenic patients use context-independent reasoning more often than context-dependent reasoning as measured by the cognitive bias task (CBT): a controlled study.

The processing of context is a relevant issue that is probably involved in many neurological and psychiatric conditions. Contextual reasoning is conceived as selection and bringing 'on line' internal representations of the tasks that can be used to mediate goal-appropriate behavioral responses. Impairment in contextual reasoning is thought to play a key role in the pathophysiology and symptom formation of schizophrenia. The Cognitive Bias Task (CBT) has recently been designed and is thought to activate contextual reasoning. A study for applying this method to schizophrenic patients and healthy control subjects has been carried out. The data show that a large percentage of the schizophrenic subjects (87.5%) do not use a context-dependent procedure for reasoning. There was a gender difference in CBT performance in the healthy control group, with more females than males using a context-independent procedure, but not in patients. These findings appear to be in agreement with the body of literature supporting the hypothesis that schizophrenic patients utilize a more uneconomic data-driven information-processing procedure. The study of contextual reasoning seems to allow the identification of a fundamental cognitive process and/or crucial regions or circuits that further research could demonstrate parsimoniously account for large parts of the heterogeneous cognitive deficits of schizophrenia.

Adult↗

PubMed1997

Basic Science Reasoning and Clinical Reasoning Intertwined: Epistemological Analysis and Consequences for Medical Education.

The aim of this paper is to emphasize the distinction between basic medical science (and reasoning) and clinical science (and reasoning) in order to illuminate some basic philosophical and cognitive issues in medical education. The Kunhian concept of exemplar refers to the field of growth of scientific knowledge and in this sense is related to the "anti-theoretical" emphasis on problem solving performance. In cognitive science this (and similar) types of postpositivistic objections to the formalistic excess of the neopositivistic tradition are exploited to stress the relevance of the distinction between theories and their domains of application. This objection is exploited to stress the difference between established bodies of scientific knowledge and their processes of discovery and/or application and, in medical knowledge, between clinical reasoning (situated, concerned with attributes of people) and basic science reasoning (unsituated, concerned with attributes of entities such as organs, bacteria, viruses). Exploiting the theoretical consequences of the previous analysis I will try to answer some questions: What is the role of problem solving in teaching and learning, as different from conventional basic science-centred education? Is it relevant, in medical education, an epistemological and logical awareness of the main methodological topics? Finally, the analysis of the significance of abduction in a unified epistemological model of medical reasoning is exploited to individuate the proper ontological level dealing with the entities and relationships belonging to the dynamism of the underlying domain knowledge (for instance biomedical physics) and the consequences for medical education.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2004

Emotional reasoning and parent-based reasoning in normal children.

A previous study by Muris, Merckelbach, and Van Spauwen demonstrated that children display emotional reasoning irrespective of their anxiety levels. That is, when estimating whether a situation is dangerous, children not only rely on objective danger information but also on their own anxiety-response. The present study further examined emotional reasoning in children aged 7-13 years (N = 508). In addition, it was investigated whether children also show parent-based reasoning, which can be defined as the tendency to rely on anxiety-responses that can be observed in parents. Children completed self-report questionnaires of anxiety, depression, and emotional and parent-based reasoning. Evidence was found for both emotional and parent-based reasoning effects. More specifically, children's danger ratings were not only affected by objective danger information, but also by anxiety-response information in both objective danger and safety stories. High levels of anxiety and depression were significantly associated with the tendency to rely on anxiety-response information, but only in the case of safety scripts.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1992

Retirement reason versus retirement process: examining the reasons for retirement typology.

Studies have often used reason for retirement as an indicator of the pathway leading to retirement. We discuss the conceptual basis for the retirement-reason typology and evaluate the distinctiveness of various reasons for labor force exit by predicting them in a standard model-based analysis. Data are from the 1982 Social Security New Beneficiary Study, and the analysis is limited to men. A number of factors in the model-based analysis have distinctive effects on exit for particular retirement reasons, but health limits increase the likelihood of all types of retirement. We conclude that reasons for retirement only partially capture distinctive retirement processes.

Aged↗

PubMed2005

Does the medical college admission test predict clinical reasoning skills? A longitudinal study employing the Medical Council of Canada clinical reasoning examination.

BACKGROUND: To investigate the predictive validity of the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) for clinical reasoning skills upon completion of medical school. METHOD: A total of 597 students (295 males, 49.4%; 302 females, 50.6%) participated from 1991 to 1999. Stepwise multiple regressions of the MCAT and premedical school GPA (independent variables) on the Part 1(declarative knowledge) and Part 2 (clinical reasoning) of the Medical Council of Canada Examinations (dependent variables) were employed. RESULTS: For Part 1, the multiple regression revealed that three predictors (verbal reasoning, biological sciences, GPA) accounted for 23.3% of the variance, and for Part 2, two predictors (verbal reasoning, GPA) accounted for 11.2%. CONCLUSION: There is both convergent and divergent evidence for the predictive validity of the MCAT for clinical reasoning.

Canada↗

PubMed1999

Developmental sequences in class reasoning and propositional reasoning.

This study explored the theoretical prediction that class and propositional reasoning skills emerge as a function of the developing ability to coordinate increasingly complex negation and affirmation operations. Children from Grades 1, 3, 5, and 7 (7-, 9-, 11-, and 13-year-olds) were presented with problems from each domain. Rasch analyses of the children's responses were consistent with the hypothesis that both types of problems measured a single underlying dimension (i.e., the coordination of affirmation and negation operations). Qualitatively distinct levels of class and propositional reasoning were identified along this dimension, adding support to the notion that children's reasoning follows a logical developmental sequence. Planned comparisons supported the order-theoretical prediction that different groups of items account for solution differences between grade levels. Results also indicated that children encounter significant difficulties when they have to reason on the basis of negative information.

Adolescent↗