ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews major findings in the psychology of deductive reasoning. It discusses these in an atheoretical manner and focuses on what the research has told about the nature of human reasoning. The chapter explores state of theory in the area of human deduction and looks at reasoning research in the context of the continuing debate about human rationality. Traditionally, problem content has been seen to have either a facilitatory or inhibitory effect on reasoning. In some ways, the heuristic approach has complementary strengths and weaknesses to those identified for the theory of formal inference rules: the theory explains biases but has little to say about competence in reasoning. The state of theory in deductive reasoning research is generally healthy, in that psychologists are giving serious thought to alternative explanations and providing detailed analyses of the phenomena. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.
