ABSTRACT
Originally published in 1982, this was an extensive and up-to-date review of research into the psychology of deductive reasoning, Jonathan Evans presents an alternative theoretical framework to the rationalist approach which had dominated much of the published work in this field at the time.
The review falls into three sections. The first is concerned with elementary reasoning tasks, in which response latency is the prime measure of interest. The second and third sections are concerned with syllogistic and propositional reasoning respectively, in which interest has focused on the explanation of frequently observed logical errors. In an extended discussion it is argued that reasoning processes are content specific, and give little indication of the operation of any underlying system of logical competence. Finally, a dual process theory of reasoning, with broad implications and connections with other fields of psychology, is elaborated and assessed in the light of recent evidence.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter 1|7 pages
Introduction
part I|62 pages
Elementary reasoning tasks
chapter 2|13 pages
Theoretical background
chapter 3|25 pages
Sentence verification
chapter 4|22 pages
Transitive inference
part II|42 pages
Syllogistic reasoning
chapter 5|9 pages
An introduction to syllogistic reasoning
chapter 6|31 pages
The experimental psychology of syllogisms
part III|96 pages
Propositional reasoning
chapter |13 pages
An Introduction to propositional reasoning
chapter |29 pages
Conditional reasoning
chapter |32 pages
The Wason selection task
chapter |20 pages
Disjunctive reasoning
part IV|49 pages
Discussion