The role of cognitive and socio-cognitive conflict in learning to reason

The mental model theory claims that the ability to falsify is at the core of human rationality. We assume that cognitive conflicts (CCs) and socio-cognitive conflicts (SCCs) induce falsification, and thus improve syllogistic reasoning performance. Our first study assesses adults’ ability to reason in two different conditions in a single experimental session. In both conditions the participants are presented with conclusions alternative to their own. In the CC condition they are told that these conclusions are casual, in the SCC condition they are told they have been produced by another individual. The second study is analogous to the first, with the exception that the participants deal with the two conditions in two different experimental sessions. The overall results reveal that falsification is enhanced by conflicts experienced at the cognitive level. The results also reveal that learning to reason occurs in adults, when tested in two distinct experimental periods.

[1]  S. Exner,et al.  Ueber optische Bewegungsempfindungen , 1888 .

[2]  G. d'Ydewalle,et al.  Deductive Reasoning and Strategies , 1999 .

[3]  J. Caverni,et al.  Interaction With a High- Versus Low-Competence Influence Source in Inductive Reasoning , 2005, The Journal of social psychology.

[4]  G. Halford.  Children's Understanding: The Development of Mental Models , 1993 .

[5]  R. Siegler,et al.  How Does Change Occur: A Microgenetic Study of Number Conservation , 1995, Cognitive Psychology.

[6]  Juan Pascual-Leone,et al.  A mathematical model for the transition rule in Piaget's developmental stages , 1970 .

[7]  Hansjörg Neth,et al.  The Search for Counterexamples in Human Reasoning , 1999 .

[8]  K C Klauer,et al.  On belief bias in syllogistic reasoning. , 2000, Psychological review.

[9]  J. Bruner,et al.  Studies In Cognitive Growth , 1966 .

[10]  A. Leslie.  Pretense and representation: The origins of "theory of mind." , 1987 .

[11]  S Druyan,et al.  Misconceptions about motion: development and training effects. , 1990, Child development.

[12]  R. Overton,et al.  Encoding variability and spacing repetitions , 1987 .

[13]  S. Phillips,et al.  Processing capacity defined by relational complexity: implications for comparative, developmental, and cognitive psychology. , 1998, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[14]  H. Ebbinghaus.  Uber das Gedachtnis , 1996 .

[15]  S. Handley,et al.  Falsifying mental models: Testing the predictions of theories of syllogistic reasoning , 1999, Memory & cognition.

[16]  Jonathan St. B. T. Evans,et al.  What could and could not be a strategy in reasoning , 1999 .

[17]  W. Doise.  The social development of the intellect , 1984 .

[18]  J. Bruner,et al.  Culture and Cognitive Growth , 1966 .

[19]  K. Stanovich,et al.  Heuristics and Biases: Individual Differences in Reasoning: Implications for the Rationality Debate? , 2002 .

[20]  Arthur M. Glenberg,et al.  Influences of retrieval processes on the spacing effect in free recall , 1977 .

[21]  Carol K. K. Chan.  Peer collaboration and discourse patterns in learning from incompatible information , 2001 .

[22]  L. S. Vygotskiĭ,et al.  Mind in society : the development of higher psychological processes , 1978 .

[23]  A. Leslie.  Mapping the mind: ToMM, ToBY, and Agency: Core architecture and domain specificity , 1994 .

[24]  S. Baron-Cohen.  How to build a baby that can read minds: Cognitive mechanisms in mindreading. , 1994 .

[25]  Jonathan Evans,et al.  Reasoning about necessity and possibility : a test of the mental model theory of deduction , 1999 .

[26]  F. N. Dempster,et al.  Distributing and Managing the Conditions of Encoding and Practice , 1996 .

[27]  P. Johnson-Laird,et al.  Development of syllogistic reasoning. , 1995, The American journal of psychology.

[28]  A. Glenberg,et al.  Component-levels theory of the effects of spacing of repetitions on recall and recognition , 1979, Memory & cognition.

[29]  S. Druyan,et al.  A comparison of four types of cognitive conflict and their effect on cognitive development , 2001 .

[30]  G. Politzer,et al.  Reasoning about Conditional Promises and Warnings: Darwinian Algorithms, Mental Models, Relevance Judgements or Pragmatic Schemas? , 1992 .

[31]  P. Johnson-Laird,et al.  Mental Models: Towards a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference, and Consciousness , 1985 .

[32]  Jan Wyndhamn,et al.  PROBLEM‐SOLVING, ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AND SITUATED REASONING. A STUDY OF JOINT COGNITIVE ACTIVITY IN THE FORMAL SETTING , 1990 .

[33]  Vincenzo Lombardo,et al.  Model theory of deduction: a unified computational approach , 2001 .

[34]  Jack C. Lyons,et al.  Carving the Mind at its (Not Necessarily Modular) Joints , 2001, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[35]  M. Posner.  Foundations of cognitive science , 1989 .

[36]  L. Rips.  The Psychology of Proof: Deductive Reasoning in Human Thinking , 1994 .

[37]  M. Tomasello,et al.  Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? 30 years later , 2008, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[38]  F. Murray,et al.  When two wrongs make a right: Promoting cognitive change by social conflict. , 1982 .

[39]  Paolo Legrenzi,et al.  Majority and minority influence in inductive reasoning: A preliminary study , 1991 .

[40]  John M. Levine,et al.  Majority and minority influence. , 1987 .

[41]  H. P. Bahrick,et al.  Retention of Spanish vocabulary over 8 years. , 1987 .

[42]  S. Gelman,et al.  Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity In Cognition And Culture , 1994 .

[43]  D. Cummins,et al.  Evidence of deontic reasoning in 3- and 4-year-old children , 1996, Memory & cognition.

[44]  Jonathan Evans,et al.  Rationality and reasoning , 1996 .

[45]  Robert A. Wilson,et al.  Book Reviews: The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences , 2000, CL.

[46]  P C Wason,et al.  Reasoning about a Rule , 1968, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology.

[47]  Monica Bucciarelli,et al.  How the construction of mental models improves learning , 2007 .

[48]  Uta Frith,et al.  Theory of mind , 2001, Current Biology.

[49]  Keith J Holyoak,et al.  Pragmatic reasoning schemas , 1985, Cognitive Psychology.

[50]  Jonathan Evans,et al.  Necessity, Possibility and Belief: A Study of Syllogistic Reasoning , 2001, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.

[51]  I. Levin,et al.  The Differential Contribution of Field-dependent and Field-independent Cognitive Styles to Sociocognitive Transaction in Promoting Scientific Reasoning , 1996 .

[52]  Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont.  Social interaction and cognitive development in children , 1980 .