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

Feeney, A.

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

Feeney, A.

Authors

A. Feeney

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
Publisher URL	http://mc.psychonomic-journals.org/content/35/7/1830.abstract