How many processes underlie category-based induction? Effects of conclusion specificity and cognitive ability

Feeney, A.

Abstract

Two studies investigated participants' sensitivity to the amount and diversity of the evidence when reasoning inductively about categories. Both showed that participants are more sensitive to characteristics of the evidence for arguments with general rather than specific conclusions. Both showed an association between cognitive ability and sensitivity to these evidence characteristics, particularly when the conclusion category was general. These results suggest that a simple associative process may not be sufficient to capture some key phenomena of category-based induction. They also support the claim that the need to generate a superordinate category is a complicating factor in category-based reasoning and that adults' tendency to generate such categories while reasoning has been overestimated.

Citation

Feeney, A. (2007). How many processes underlie category-based induction? Effects of conclusion specificity and cognitive ability. Memory and Cognition, 35(7), 1830-1839

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2007
• Deposit Date: Feb 11, 2009
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 4, 2010
• Journal: Memory and Cognition
• Print ISSN: 0090-502X
• Electronic ISSN: 1532-5946
• Publisher: Psychonomic Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 35
• Issue: 7
• Pages: 1830-1839
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1536737
• Publisher URL: http://mc.psychonomic-journals.org/content/35/7/1830.abstract