Showing papers on "Verbal reasoning published in 1997"

The relation between individual differences in fantasy and theory of mind

Abstract: The relation between early fantasy/pretense and children's knowledge about mental life was examined in a study of 152 3- and 4-year-old boys and girls. Children were interviewed about their fantasy lives (e.g., imaginary companions, impersonation of imagined characters) and were given tasks assessing their level of pretend play and verbal intelligence. In a second session 1 week later, children were given a series of theory of mind tasks, including measures of appearance-reality, false belief, representational change, and perspective taking. The theory of mind tasks were significantly intercorrelated with the effects of verbal intelligence and age statistically controlled. Individual differences in fantasy/pretense were assessed by (1) identifying children who created imaginary characters, and (2) extracting factor scores from a combination of interview and behavioral measures. Each of these fantasy assessments was significantly related to the theory of mind performance of the 4-year-old children, independent of verbal intelligence.

Mathematical reasoning : analogies, metaphors, and images

Abstract: Contents: Preface. Part I: Introduction. L.D. English, Analogies, Metaphors, and Images: Vehicles for Mathematical Reasoning. Part II: Cognitive Foundations for a Mind-Based Mathematics. G. Lakoff, R.E. Nunez, The Metaphorical Structure of Mathematics: Sketching Out Cognitive Foundations for a Mind-Based Mathematics. Part III: Mathematical Reasoning: Analogies. R.B. Davis, C.A. Maher, How Students Think: The Role of Representations. P.A. Alexander, C.S. White, M. Daugherty, Analogical Reasoning and Early Mathematics Learning. B. Gholson, D. Smither, A. Buhrman, M.K. Duncan, K.A. Pierce, Children's Development of Analogical Problem-Solving Skill. L.D. English, Children's Reasoning Processes in Classifying and Solving Computational Word Problems. M. Bassok, Two Types of Reliance on Correlations Between Content and Structure in Reasoning About Word Problems. M.J. Rattermann, Commentary: Mathematical Reasoning and Analogy. Part IV: Mathematical Reasoning: Metaphors, Metonymies, and Images. N.C. Presmeg, Reasoning With Metaphors and Metonymies in Mathematics Learning. G.H. Wheatley, Reasoning With Images in Mathematical Activity. N.C. Presmeg, Generalization Using Imagery in Mathematics. D.H. Clements, J. Sarama, Children's Mathematical Reasoning With the Turtle Programming Metaphor. A. Sfard, Commentary: On Metaphorical Roots of Conceptual Growth.

Goal-oriented critical reasoning and individual differences in critical reasoning biases.

Abstract: In 4 experiments, the relationships among critical reasoning, personal goals, general intellectual ability, and information-processing style were explored. Three critical reasoning competencies were investigated: the law of large numbers, the intuitive analysis of covariance, and the ability to detect flaws in experimental designs. Participants were presented problems that involved goal-enhancing, goal-neutral, and goal-threatening evidence. There were 2 main findings: (a) Although general ability predicted 2 components of critical reasoning, biases in reasoning were better predicted by information processing style (i.e., rational vs. intuitive). (b) Reasoning on the goal-enhancing and neutral problems was less sophisticated than reasoning on threatening problems. Depth of processing seems to be a primary mechanism underlying motivated reasoning. In addition, information processing style is an individual difference variable that moderates the extent of reasoning biases. Similar results were obtained across different forms of critical thinking.

The Development of Inductive Reasoning: Cross-sectional Assessments in an Educational Context

Abstract: This paper links two research paradigms, one that studies attributes and mechanisms of inductive reasoning and one that tries to make school learning more meaningful and knowledge better understood...

Working Memory Involvement in Propositional and Spatial Reasoning

Abstract: Four experiments assessed the relative involvement of different working memory components in two types of reasoning tasks: propositional and spatial reasoning. Using the secondary-task methodology, visual, central-executive, and phonological loads were realised. Although the involvement of visuospatial resources in propositional reasoning has traditionally been considered to be small, an overall analysis of the present data suggests an alternative account. A theoretical analysis of the pattern of results in terms of Evans' (1984, 1989) twostage theory of reasoning is proposed and tested in Experiments 3 and 4, in which direct evidence for the alternative account was obtained: significant disruption of propositional reasoning by a concurrent spatial load.

Bias in adolescents' everyday reasoning and its relationship with intellectual ability, personal theories, and self-serving motivation.

Abstract: The author presented 60 9th- and 12th-graders with hypothetical arguments that contained logical fallacies. Arguments were either consistent or inconsistent with participants' theories. Participants rated the quality and truth of each argument, identified perceived strengths and weaknesses in the arguments, and verbally described hypothetical experiments that could lead to evidence falsifying the claims made in the arguments. Results indicated that intellectual ability, particularly verbal ability, was the best predictor of each index of everyday reasoning. However, neither the ability measures nor age were related to biases in everyday reasoning. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that, for each reasoning variable, adolescents' personal theories accounted for the most variance in reasoning biases. These findings are discussed in terms of the roles that intellectual ability and theory-driven motivation play in everyday reasoning and self-serving adolescent reasoning.

Deficits in Source Monitoring in Subjects with Auditory Hallucinations May be Due to Differences in Verbal Intelligence and Verbal Memory.

Abstract: Previous research has proposed that the experience of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia represents a failure to monitor self-generated verbal mental imagery. However, recent neuropsychological investigations into this matter have provided inconclusive and even contradictory findings with respect to the proposed relationship. This study compared the performance of three groups of adult males, schizophrenic inpatients (hallucinators and nonhallucinators), and normal controls, matched for age, education, and medication, on a source monitoring task. Initial analysis indicated that performance on a Verbal IQ and Verbal Memory test were significantly related to performance on the source monitoring task. Comparisons between groups were made on the basis of state and trait group characteristics with respect to hallucinations. After controlling for the influence of Verbal IQ and Verbal Memory on task performance, no between-group differences were found for overall accuracy in attribution of self-generated i...

Attention Performance in an Epidemiological Sample of Urban Children: The Role of Gender and Verbal Intelligence

Abstract: We administered a comprehensive attentional battery to an epidemiologically defined sample of 435 first-and second-grade children to assess the influence of gender and verbal intelligence on attention. The battery included three versions of the continuous performance test (CPT), two digit cancellation tasks, three subtests from the WISC-R, and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. The results indicated that both gender and intelligence had an impact on attentional performance. Girls performed better than boys; they made fewer errors on the CPT and obtained higher scores on the digit cancellation task and the Coding subtest of the WISC-R. Children with higher verbal intelligence also performed better on the attentional tests, but this advantage was not observed across measures or levels of performance. For example, children with limited verbal skills performed significantly worse than their peers only in measures with high processing demands (the degraded CPT and the distraction version of the digit ca...

Verbal Abilities, Gender, and the Introductory Economics Course: A New Look at an Old Assumption

Abstract: A common assumption in the literature on learning economics is that female college students possess greater verbal abilities than male students. First mentioned by MacDowell, Senn, and Soper (1977) and repeated in studies by Siegfried (1979), Lumsden and Scott (1987), Heath (1989), and Anderson, Benjamin, and Fuss (1994), this assumption has been raised in connection with evidence of a gender gap in learning economics. It seems especially relevant to findings that female economics students score lower than males on multiple-choice tests but not on essay tests.' The assumption that women entering college have an advantage over men in verbal cognitive skills is no longer supported by the data. Originating in research by psychologists (Wechsler 1955; Maccoby and Jacklin 1974), the assumption has been contradicted in more recent studies (Feingold 1988; Burton, Lewis, and Robertson 1988). In a longitudinal study of high school students' scores on the Differential Aptitude Test (DAT) and of college-bound seniors on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), Feingold (1988) found no significant differences in verbal reasoning scores between male and female high school seniors.2 Such evidence is consistent with the reversal, beginning in the early 1970s, of the traditional female advantage in verbal SAT scores (U.S. Department of Education 1993). Since the mid-1980s, college-bound women's average score on the verbal SAT has been 2 to 3 percentage points lower than men's average score.3 The presumed difference in verbal skills is also somewhat difficult to square with the apparent gender effect in learning economics. It seems quite obvious that a discipline that emphasizes complex systems of causality, pervasive qualification of conclusions, and precise measurement of behavioral propensities and technical possibilities will be difficult for a student whose vocabulary or ability to grasp complex patterns of discourse is limited. However, if strong verbal skills are particularly important to understanding economic arguments and if women possess greater verbal abilities on average, then women should have an advantage in learning economics, ceteris paribus.4 Economists have done relatively little to measure the contributions of different aptitudes to success in learning economics. In one of the few studies to separate the effects of verbal and quantitative aptitude on economics test scores, Siegfried and Strand (1977) found the verbal SAT score to be a more significant predictor

Distinctive patterns of relationship of phonological awareness and working memory with reading development

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to assess the contributions of specific components of verbal and nonverbal working memory and of phonological awareness to the prediction of reading achievement. One hundred and three children from grades 1, 2, and 3 were administered a measure of phonological awareness, four measures of working memory, four measures of academic achievement, and a measure of verbal intelligence. Separate multiple regression analyses controlling for the effects of age, sex and verbal intelligence showed that tests of verbal memory and of direct recall significantly predicted reading and spelling achievement whereas tests of backward recall significantly predicted only pseudoword identification. Phonological awareness was also found to relate significantly to reading and spelling achievement even when working memory was partialled out. Thus, phonological awareness and measures of working memory predicted specific and significant amounts of variance in reading and spelling achievement. Further, none of these measures were specifically related to arithmetic achievement. The specific roles of phonological awareness and working memory in reading development are examined in the discussion.

Reliability of theory of mind task performance by individuals with a learning disability: A research note

Abstract: The aim of the present study was to test the reliability of theory of mind task performance by individuals with a learning disability. Across a series of three false belief tasks and two belief-desire reasoning tasks reliability was moderate--although it was no lower than has been found over a period of 3 weeks in normally developing children. The overall level of performance on the tasks was also only moderate, with approximately half the subjects passing on any one false belief task, and one quarter on any one belief-desire reasoning task. Reliable passers had higher VMA and NVMA than unreliable passers and subjects who failed. Given the important interpretations made regarding the representational skills of individuals on the basis of their responses in such experimental tasks, further work investigating the psychometric properties of the tasks is required with both typically and atypically developing individuals.

Taking a Course in Research Methods Improves Reasoning about Real-Life Events

Abstract: We examined the extent to which students who take a course in research methods improve their reasoning about real-life events. Because social science majors improve their methodological and statistical reasoning during 4 years of college (Lehman & Nisbett, 1990), a logical source of this improvement in psychology would be the Research Methods course. We tested students in Research Methods and in Developmental Psychology on methodological and statistical reasoning at the beginning and the end of the term. As expected, reasoning scores of Research Methods students improved more than did scores of Developmental Psychology students. These results have implications for teaching because they support our intuitive notions that what we are teaching has real-life value.

Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing

Abstract: Preface How to use this book Smart Thinking Claims: The Key Elements of Reasoning Linking: The Key Process in Reasoning Understanding the Links Between Claims More Effective Reasoning I: Better Claims More Effective Reasoning II: Better Links Types of Reasoning Research, Reasoning, and Analysis Planning and Creating your Reasoning Bringing it Altogether Summary Answers, Discussion, and Further Advice Glossary of Key Terms and Concepts Further Reading Guide to Important Skills

What should default reasoning be, by default?

Abstract: This is a position paper concerning the role of empirical studies of human default reasoning in the formalization of AI theories of default reasoning. We note that AI motivates its theoretical enterprise by reference to human skill at default reasoning, but that the actual research does not make any use of this sort of information and instead relies on intuitions of individual investigators. We discuss two reasons theorists might not consider human performance relevant to formalizing default reasoning: (a) that intuitions are sufficient to describe a model, and (b) that human performance in this arena is irrelevant to a competence model of the phenomenon. We provide arguments against both these reasons. We then bring forward three further considerations against the use of intuitions in this arena: (a) it leads to an unawareness of predicate ambiguity, (b) it presumes an understanding of ordinary language statements of typicality, and (c) it is similar to discredited views in other fields. We advocate empirical investigation of the range of human phenomena that intuitively embody default reasoning. Gathering such information would provide data with which to generate formal default theories and against which to test the claims of proposed theories. Our position is that such data are the very phenomena that default theories are supposed to explain.

Infant and preschool mental and verbal abilities: How are infant scores related to preschool scores?

Abstract: The present study examined two different systems for creating subscales for the Bayley Mental Development Index. The purpose was to determine how performance on Bayley MDI subscales at 1 and 2 years of age is related to performance on the Standford-Binet IV at 3 through 5 years of age. The purpose was also to determine how the correlations for global and specific skill scores change as time intervals between assessment points increase. The results show that first year MDI and subscale scores were weak correlates of two-year MDI and subscale scores and preschool scores on the Stanford-Binet. Stronger correlations were found between two-year scores and Stanford-Binet IQ and Verbal Reasoning scores. The data show similar stabilities between the measures of global functioning (MDI and IQ), and between early and later measures of verbal abilities beginning after 2 years of age.

Causal Reasoning as a Base for Advancing a Systemic Approach To Simple Electrical Circuits.

Abstract: This paper focuses on the use of research results on students' causal reasoning in designing the teaching of electricity. Examination of students' replies in written questions and classroom teacher-lead discussions suggests that several students, when they construct microscopic mechanisms to explain electrical phenomena, may envision transient states and employ a specific type of causal chain, the iterative one, in addition to the simple and linear causal reasoning. In the second part of paper we present and discuss features of a microscopic mechanism adapted to students' causal reasoning patterns which relies on qualitative modelling of transient states of electrical circuit operation.

Toward an Aristotelian model of teacher reasoning

Abstract: This paper reviews a philosophical model of teacher reasoning based on practical arguments as well as psychological models based on cyclical stages and subject-matter representations, both of which are similar in spirit to the practical argument model. This is followed by a review of a philosophical critique of the practical reasoning model, which emphasizes the role of contemplation and leads the discussion toward an Aristotelian framework. Aristotle's three-way distinction between theory, practice and production is used to describe a balanced model of teacher reasoning. Teaching is productive in so far as it aims at student learning, it is practical in so far as it is an 'end in itself', and it is theoretical in so far as it involves reflection, both on subject-matter and on students. The Aristotelian model is used to synthesize the previously reviewed models of teacher reasoning and point toward a normative vision of teacher reasoning.

Analogical Reasoning and Early Mathematics Learning

Abstract: In developing this chapter on analogical reasoning in young children, we were guided by two important premises. The first premise is that young children, even those of preschool age, show evidence of analogical reasoning. The second premise we forward is that analogical reasoning is foundational to learning, in general, and to early mathematics learning, in particular. Should these premises be upheld, then it would stand to reason that the more that researchers and practitioners come to recognize the reasoning potential of young minds and the more that they are able to grasp the central role that reasoning analogically plays in learning and development, the more informed future investigations and instructional practice in mathematics will become.

Investigating the Nature of Formal Reasoning in Chemistry: Testing Lawson's Multiple Hypothesis Theory.

Abstract: Lawson (1992) posited the multiple hypothesis theory to explain the essence of scientific reasoning. According to this theory, the essence of scientific reasoning is “the ability to initiate reasoning with more than one antecedent condition.” The present study tests the assumptions of this theory with high school students in general experience areas and in chemistry. The findings are generally in support of the theory's assumptions. This article also contains a theoretical discussion which points out how the theory needs to be extended before it can justifiably “constitute the core of a viable alternative theory of reasoning.” © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 34: 1067–1081, 1997.

An Explicit Representation of Reasoning Failures

Abstract: This paper focuses upon the content and the level of granularity at which representations for the mental world should be placed in case-based explainers that employ introspective reasoning. That is, for a case-based reasoning system to represent thinking about the self, about the states and processes of reasoning, at what level of detail should one attempt to declaratively capture the contents of thought? Some claim that a mere set of two mental primitives are sufficient to represent the utterances of humans concerning verbs of thought such as “I forgot his birthday.” Alternatively, many in the CBR community have built systems that record elaborate traces of reasoning, keep track of knowledge dependencies or inference, or encode much metaknowledge concerning the structure of internal rules and defaults. The position here is that a system should be able instead to capture enough details to represent causally a common set of reasoning failure symptoms. I propose a simple model of expectation-driven reasoning, derive a taxonomy of reasoning failures from the model, and present a declarative representation of the failure symptoms that have been implemented in a CBR simulation. Such representations enable a system to explain reasoning failures by mapping from symptoms of the failures to causal factors involved.

Education and cognitive function in Alzheimer's disease.

Abstract: In normal aging, an association exists between level of education and verbal abilities. Clinical experience suggests that this relationship may also hold true in Alzheimer's disease (AD). In this study, we examined performance on selected verbal and nonverbal neuropsychological tests in a series of 51 patients with probable AD. Performance on two verbal measures-the National Adult Reading Test-Revised (NART-R) and the Vocabulary subtest from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R)-showed strong correlations with level of education. Scores on three nonverbal tests-WAIS-R Block Design, WAIS-R Digit Symbol, and Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination clock drawings-were unrelated to education. Consistent with our hypothesis, AD patients with higher premorbid education showed better performance on certain measures of verbal competence. These results indicate that, as in normal aging, education is associated with verbal abilities in AD.

A cognitive neuropsychological approach to the study of delusions in late‐onset schizophrenia

Abstract: OBJECTIVE: Hypotheses to explain delusion formation include distorted perceptual processing of meaningful stimuli (e.g. faces), abnormal reasoning, or a combination of both. The study investigated these hypotheses using standardized neuropsychological tests. DESIGN: A three-patient case-study, compared with a small group (n = 8) of age-matched normal control subjects. SETTING: Hospital in- and outpatients. Age-matched normal controls were from local residential homes. PATIENTS: Three subjects with late-onset schizophrenia, two currently deluded and one in remission. Both deluded subjects had persecutory beliefs. One had a delusion of misidentification. INTERVENTIONS: All subjects were administered standardized neuropsychological tests of facial processing and tests of verbal reasoning. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The test scores of the three patients were compared with published normal values and the age-matched control data. RESULTS: The tests demonstrated impaired matching of unfamiliar faces in deluded subjects, particularly in the subject with delusional misidentification. Increasing the emotional content of logical reasoning problems had a significant effect on the deluded subjects' reasoning but not that of the normal controls. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest impaired visual processing plus abnormal reasoning in deluded subjects. However, these impairments are relatively subtle given the severity of psychiatric disorder in the patients studied.

Cognitive imbalance and antisocial personality characteristics

Abstract: A cognitive imbalance, in which intellectual functioning is elevated in the performance area in comparison to verbal IQ, has been posited as an antecedent condition in relation to antisocial behaviors. The current investigation was based on the notion of a developmental arrest in which verbal, analytical, controlling brain processes (analogous to verbal IQ) fail to develop commensurately with the more impulsive actions mediated by the motor areas of the cerebral cortex (analogous to performance IQ). The simple verbal IQ performance IQ discrepancy index used in prior studies was reformulated as a causal theoretical model consisting of shared and unique performance IQ variance. The participants were 325 adults including 141 prison inmates. They were administered the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) and the Psychopathic Deviate (Pd) and Mania (Ma) scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2). These were the manifest (measured) variables in the model tested by means of structural equation modeling procedures. Several statistical indices suggested an excellent model-data congruence.