Lecture 22: Reasoning Flashcards
Definition of Reasoning and types of reasoning
Definition:
• The process of drawing conclusions or solving a
problem
• Part of the measures of intelligence
Types:
• Inductive
• Deductive
Overview of Regions involved in Reasoning
- the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (BAs 6, 9, 10, 45, 46, 47)
- the inferior (BAs 39, 40) and superior (BA 7) parietal lobule
- the anterior cingulate (BA 32)
- regions within the temporal (BAs 21, 37)
- occipital (BAs 18, 19) lobes.
- White matter regions (i.e., arcuate fasciculus —> makes sense because we reason to understand language and the AF connects Broca to Wernicke—> connects temporal and parietal to frontal (which is necessary for reasoning)
In image: do not need to know brodmann areas. Dark ones shows dominance and light ones show that it is more bilateral in these regions.
What is a Problem?
• What are they?
• An obstacle between a present state and a goal - you need to use information and reason to get a solution.
• Not immediately obvious how to get around the obstacle
• Difficult
• Insight in Problem-Solving (insight problems)
• Sudden realization of a problem’s solution (we do not come to the solution in a progressive way)
• Often requires restructuring the problem
Ex: you learn something and this learning was so profound for you that the lengths are very solid —> this makes it hard for you to deconstruct everything and think of a new way. E
• Increased activity in the right hemisphere anterior superior temporal gyrus for insight relative to noninsight solutions
• Obstacles to Problem-Solving
• Mental set (everything we already know that can help us solve a problem)
• A preconceived notion about how to approach a problem
•Based on a person’s past experiences with the problem (or similar problems)
Using analogies to solve a problem
• Using a solution to a similar problem to guide the solution to new problem
• “Analogical problem solving”: analogies aid problem-solving
• Analogical transfer: The transfer from one problem to another —> if you practice on a problem prior and get the solution then your brain will understand how to reason in that type of problem.
• Source problem to target problem
• Noticing relationship
• Mapping correspondence between source and target
• If you are an expert in one field, it is easy for you to use analogies. But when you are in front of a new type of problem, the creative people will perform better. Depends on the problem.
• Regions involved in applying analogical mapping
• the dorsomedial frontal cortex and in the left hemisphere; the inferior, middle, and medial frontal cortices; the parietal cortex; and the superior occipital cortex
• Often hints must be given to notice connection
How Experts solve problems
What is an expert?
- “A person who, by devoting a large amount of time to learning about a field and practicing and applying that learning, have become acknowledged as being extremely knowledgeable or skilled in that field.”
Advantages
- Experts solve problems in their field faster and with a higher success rate than beginners
- Experts possess more knowledge about their fields
- Knowledge is organized so it can be accessed when needed to work on a problem. When our knowledge is organized it is easier to retrieve
• Novice: surface features
• Expert: structural features
Disadvantages
- Experts spend more time analyzing other types of problems — less efficient because they have mental set.
- Experts are no better than novices when given problems outside of their field
- Experts less likely to be open to new ways of looking at problems. Usually less creative then novices.
Physics problem example
For the novice group, we can see that they grouped the two problems together based on the images. They looked at the surface of the problem- the image.
For the expert group, they grouped the 2 problems based on structural features.
Definition of inductive reasoning
• Reasoning that is based on observation
• Reaching conclusions from evidence — reaching conclusion from observation/evidence.
• Strength of argument (your observation has to represent your population)
• Representativeness of observations
• Number of observations (sufficient number of observations)
• Quality of observations
• Used to make scientific discoveries
• Hypotheses and general conclusions
• Used in everyday life
• Make a prediction about what will happen based on observation about what has happened in the
past
• Heuristics
• “Rules of thumb” that are likely to provide the correct answer to a problem, but are not foolproof
• The representativeness heuristic
• The availability heuristic
What is availability heuristics?
Availability heuristic: events more easily remembered are judged as being more probable than those less easily remembered
- It is the fact that when we remember something, when it pops into our memory. Then, when we are solving a problem the most probable event is a link to the event that pops into our mind. So, events more easily remembered are judged as being more probable than those less easily remembered.
Example: participants need to say between two causes of death which one is more likely to cause death. For example, when we take the case of Asthma and tornados more people think that tornadoes are more likely to cause death because it is more easily remembered. We hear about it more, therefore it is more available to us (news)
What is representativeness heuristics
• Representativeness heuristic: the probability that A is a member of class B can be determined by how well the properties of A resembles properties normally associated with class B
• Use base rate information if it is all that is available (if you take the population canada, there will be 10% that will be farmers, what is the probability that George is a farmer? = 10%)
• Use descriptive information if available and disregard base rate information
The availability heuristic leads to what types of errors?
• Illusory correlations: correlation appears to exist, but either does not exist or is much weaker than assumed. This is the case because it is quickly available to your mind (more easily available).
• Stereotypes: Oversimplified generalizations about a group or class of people that often focuses on the negative
The representativeness heuristic -rules
• Conjunction rule: probability of two events cannot be higher than the probability of the single constituents
Example: you cannot say that there is a 100% chance that Laura is a feminist bank teller because it is part of a larger group.
• Law of large numbers: the larger the number of individuals randomly drawn from a population, the more representative the resulting group will be of the entire population
Biases
• The myside bias: the tendency for people to generate and evaluate evidence and test their hypotheses in a way that is biased toward their own opinions and attitudes.
• The confirmation bias: tendency to selectively look for information that conforms to our hypothesis and overlook information that argues against it - confirmation bias is a specific type of myside bias that is associated specifically to select information.
• Lord and coworkers (1979)
• Had those in favor of capital punishment and those against it read the same article
• Those in favor found the article convincing
• Those against found the article unconvincing
Brain areas and inductive reasoning
Looked at brain activity when participants were performing rule induction (RI), Not only performing rule induction but applying it (giving the rule) - RIA and control task - perceptual judgement task.
- In the RI task, they were presented a series of 3 numbers and they had to determine the rule of the series.
- In RIA task, you need to determine the rule and then apply it - choose what the next number in the sequence will be.
- In Jud, easy task, you have to look at sequence and say if a 10 is presented.
When they looked at the brain areas involved in this, they saw that there was significant bold signal changes (fMRI task):
- Rule induction (RI) and Rule induction application (RIA) were both superior to the judgement (Jug) in the superior parietal lobe, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, in the medial occipital gyrus, the precuneus and caudate
- In the precuneus and caudate, it was the RIA that was even more increased.
The higher order regions are associated with inductive reasoning.
Deductive reasoning
Definition: Determining whether a conclusion logically follows from premises
- you have information and then you have to conclude using that information.
- deductive reasoning is not based on observation, it is based on statements (things that we know).
• Syllogism
• Two statements called premises
• Third statement called conclusion
• Categoricalsyllogism
• Describe relation between two categories using all, no, or some
• Conditional syllogism
• “If p,then q”
• Complex form: Wason card selection card
• Validity - is ur reasoning valid?
• Syllogism is valid if conclusion follows logically from its two premises
• If two premises of a valid syllogism are true, the syllogism’s conclusion must be true
• Do not confuse “validity” with “truth”
If syllogism is valid and statements are true, then the conclusion is true.
Example of syllogisms:
• Syllogism 1:
• Premise 1: All birds are animals (All A is B).
• Premise 2: All animals eat food (All B is C).
Conclusion: ?
• Syllogism 2:
• Premise 1: All birds are animals (All A is B).
• Premise 2: All animals have four legs (All B is C).
Conclusion: ?
• Syllogism 1:
• Premise 1: All birds are animals (All A is B).
• Premise 2: All animals eat food (All B is C).
• Conclusion: Therefore, all birds eat food (All A is C).
• Syllogism 2:
• Premise 1: All birds are animals (All A is B).
• Premise 2: All animals have four legs (All B is C).
• Conclusion: Therefore, all birds have four legs (All A is C).
The syllogism is valid but the premise two is false.
Conditional syllogisms
• Syllogism 1 (valid)
• If I study, I will get a good grade. (If p, then q)
• I’ve studied. (p)
• Therefore, I’ll get a good mark. (q)
• Syllogism 2 (valid)
• If I study, I will get a good grade. (If p, then q)
• I got a bad mark. (q)
• Therefore, I didn’t study. (p)
• Syllogism 3 (invalid)
• If I study, I will get a good grade. (If p, then q)
• I got a good grade. (q)
• Therefore, I studied. (p)
• Syllogism 4 (invalid)
• If I study, I will get a good grade. (If p, then q)
• I did not study. (p)
• Therefore, I didn’t get a good mark. (p)
This is doing a mental model.
You cannot say the negative form of P and Q
The Wason Four-Card Problem
• Effect of using real-world items in a conditional-reasoning problem
• Determine minimum number of cards to turn over to test: if there is a vowel on one side, then there is an even number on the other side
You want to test If this is true. So you need to turn E and 7 to see if there is an even number behind E and 7 to see if there is not an even number behind (not q, then not p).
