ABSTRACT
The study of individual differences in the use of deductive reasoning strategies has been a minority interest for many years. However, the steady accumulation of findings means that not only can different strategy users be identified for many deduction tasks, but also that significant advances have been made in understanding why different strategies are chosen and how they develop. Although research into these issues may, on the surface, lack the glamour of the pursuit of fundamental reasoning processes (see, e.g., Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 1991; Rips, 1994a), these are nonetheless important topics for at least two reasons. First, given the overwhelming evidence that people can and do use different strategies for deduction tasks, any attempt to explain human deduction that ignores these must be incomplete. Second, researchers such as Siegler (e.g., Crowley, Shrager, & Siegler, 1997; Siegler, 1996; Siegler & Jenkins, 1989) suggest that cognitive development can be understood in terms of strategy selection and development, and hence any findings concerning these for deductive reasoning tasks will potentially be of interest to a far wider community.
