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Relations between premise similarity and inductive strength

Heit, E.; Feeney, A

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Authors

E. Heit

A Feeney



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
Publisher URL http://pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/12/2/340.abstract

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Copyright Statement
© Copyright 2005 Psychonomic Society, Inc.





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