Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-zlgnt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-30T15:45:15.183Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mental models: The revised theory brings new problems

Review products

Commentary on Johnson-LairdPhilip N. ByrneRuth M. J. (1993) Précis of Deduction. BBS 16:323–380.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2011

David Hardman
David Hardman
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, City University, Northhampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, United Kingdom, d.k.hardman@city.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The new notation for mental-models theory proposed by Johnson-Laird and Byrne (1991; 1993) makes predictions that are inconsistent with those made previously by those authors. Notably, two frequently observed reasoning fallacies are not predicted by the theory. Moreover, the assumption made in the domain of syllogistic reasoning, that arbitrary numbers of individuals are used to represent premises, is also shown to cause problems for the prediction of problem difficulty.

Information

Type
Continuing Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 19 , Special Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 542 - 543
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Bara, B., Bucciarelli, M., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1995 The development of syllogistic reasoning. American Journal of Psychology, 108:157–193. [PNJL]CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dickstein, L. S. (1978) The effect of figure on syllogistic reasoning. Memory and Cognition, 6:76–83. [DH]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, J. St., B. T. Newstead, S. E., & Byrne, R. M. J. (1993) Human reasoning: The psychology of deduction. Erlbaum. [DH]Google Scholar
Hardman, D. K. (1994) Syllogistic reasoning: processing additional premises and evaluating conclusions. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Wales, College of Cardiff. [PNJL]Google Scholar
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1983) Mental models: Towards a cognitive science of language, inference, and consciousness. Cambridge University Press. [DH]Google Scholar
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1993) Human and machine thinking Erlbaum. [DH]Google Scholar
Johnson-Laird, P. N. & Bara, B. (1984) Syllogistic inference. Cognition, 16:1–61. [PNJL, DH]CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson-Laird, P. N. & Byrne, R. M. J. (1991) Deduction. Erlbaum. [PNJL, DH]Google Scholar
Johnson-Laird, P. N. & Byrne, R. M. J. (1993) Author's response: Mental models or formal rules? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16:368–376. [PNJL, DH]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson-Laird, P. N. & Steedman, M. (1978) The psychology of syllogisms. Cognitive Psychology, 10:64–99. [PNJL]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin-Cordero, J. & González-Labra, M. J. (1994) Amnesic mental models do not completely spill the beans of deductive reasoning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 17:773–774. [For author's response: see 775–777.] [PNJL]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polk, T. A. (1993) Mental models, more or less. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16:362–363. [PNJL]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polk, T. A. & Newell, A. (1995) Deduction as verbal reasoning. Psychological Review, 102:533–566. [PNJL]CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rips, L. J. (1994) The psycliology of proof: Deductive reasoning in human thinking. MIT Press. [DH]CrossRefGoogle Scholar