Relations between premise similarity and inductive strength

Heit, E.; Feeney, A

Abstract

According to the diversity principle, diverse evidence is strong evidence. There has been considerable evidence that people respect this principle in inductive reasoning. However, exceptions may be particularly informative. Medin, Coley, Storms, and Hayes (2003) introduced a relevance theory of inductive reasoning and used this theory to predict exceptions, including the nondiversity-by-property-reinforcement effect. A new experiment in which this phenomenon was investigated is reported here. Subjects made inductive strength judgments and similarity judgments for stimuli from Medin et al. (2003). The inductive strength judgments showed the same pattern as that in Medin et al. (2003); however, the similarity judgments suggested that the pattern should be interpreted as a diversity effect, rather than as a nondiversity effect. It is concluded that the evidence regarding the predicted nondiversity-by-property-reinforcement effect does not give distinctive support for relevance theory, although this theory does address other results.

Citation

Heit, E., & Feeney, A. (2005). Relations between premise similarity and inductive strength. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 12(2), 340-344

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: 2005-04
• Deposit Date: Feb 11, 2009
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 4, 2010
• Journal: Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
• Print ISSN: 1069-9384
• Electronic ISSN: 1531-5320
• Publisher: Springer
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 340-344
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1597939
• Publisher URL: http://pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/12/2/340.abstract