Matching bias in syllogistic reasoning: Evidence for a dual-process account from response times and confidence ratings

We examined matching bias in syllogistic reasoning by analysing response times, confidence ratings, and individual differences. Roberts’ (2005) “negations paradigm” was used to generate conflict between the surface features of problems and the logical status of conclusions. The experiment replicated matching bias effects in conclusion evaluation (Stupple & Waterhouse, 2009), revealing increased processing times for matching/logic “conflict problems”. Results paralleled chronometric evidence from the belief bias paradigm indicating that logic/belief conflict problems take longer to process than non-conflict problems (Stupple, Ball, Evans, & Kamal-Smith, 2011). Individuals’ response times for conflict problems also showed patterns of association with the degree of overall normative responding. Acceptance rates, response times, metacognitive confidence judgements, and individual differences all converged in supporting dual-process theory. This is noteworthy because dual-process predictions about heuristic/analytic conflict in syllogistic reasoning generalised from the belief bias paradigm to a situation where matching features of conclusions, rather than beliefs, were set in opposition to logic

Dimensions of Creative Evaluation: Distinct Design and Reasoning Strategies for Aesthetic, Functional and Originality Judgments

The datasets provided as part of DTRS-10 all relate to what may broadly be labeled as ‘design critiques’ in an educational context. As such, we chose to center our theoretical analysis on the evaluative reasoning taking place during expert appraisals of the design concepts that were being produced by industrial design students throughout the design process. This overall framing for our research allowed us to pursue a series of research questions concerning the dimensions of creative evaluation in design and their consequences for reasoning strategies and suggestions for moving further in the creative progress. Our transcript coding and analysis focused on three key dimensions of creativity, that is, originality, functionality and aesthetics. Each dimension was associated with a particular underpinning ‘logic’ that determined the distinctive ways in which these dimensions were seen to be evaluated in practice. In particular, our analysis clarified the way in which design dimensions triggered very different reasoning strategies such as running mental simulations, or making suggestions for design improvement, ranging from definitive ‘go/kill’ decisions right through to loose recommendations to continue to work on a concept for a period of time without any further directional steer beyond this general appraisal. Overall, we believe that our findings not only advance a theoretical understanding of evaluation behaviour that arises in design critiques, but also have important practical implications in terms of alerting expert design evaluators to the nature and consequences of their critical appraisals

The intersection between Descriptivism and Meliorism in reasoning research: further proposals in support of ‘soft normativism’

The rationality paradox centers on the observation that people are highly intelligent, yet show evidence of errors and biases in their thinking when measured against normative standards. Elqayam and Evans’ (2011) reject normative standards in the psychological study of thinking, reasoning and deciding in favor of a ‘value-free’ descriptive approach to studying high-level cognition. In reviewing Elqayam and Evans’ (2011) position, we defend an alternative to descriptivism in the form of ‘soft normativism,’ which allows for normative evaluations alongside the pursuit of descriptive research goals. We propose that normative theories have considerable value provided that researchers: (1) are alert to the philosophical quagmire of strong relativism; (2) are mindful of the biases that can arise from utilizing normative benchmarks; and (3) engage in a focused analysis of the processing approach adopted by individual reasoners. We address the controversial ‘is–ought’ inference in this context and appeal to a ‘bridging solution’ to this contested inference that is based on the concept of ‘informal reflective equilibrium.’ Furthermore, we draw on Elqayam and Evans’ (2011) recognition of a role for normative benchmarks in research programs that are devised to enhance reasoning performance and we argue that such Meliorist research programs have a valuable reciprocal relationship with descriptivist accounts of reasoning. In sum, we believe that descriptions of reasoning processes are fundamentally enriched by evaluations of reasoning quality, and argue that if such standards are discarded altogether then our explanations and descriptions of reasoning processes are severely undermined

Experiments in Empirical Methodology

Two novel experiments were conducted within this project, covering Preference Reversals, Allais Paradox tasks and Dictator Games. In each case the aim was to see whether classic results from designs run in classical experimental economics mode generalise to more realistic (but still incentivised) tasks with more psychological content

On the adaptive function of children's and adults' false memories

Recent research has shown that memory illusions can successfully prime both children’s and adults’ performance on complex, insight-based problems (compound remote associates tasks or CRATs). The current research aimed to clarify the locus of these priming effects. Like before, Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists were selected to prime subsequent CRATs such that the critical lures were also the solution words to a subset of the CRATs participants attempted to solve. Unique to the present research, recognition memory tests were used and participants were either primed during the list study phase, during the memory test phase, or both. Across two experiments, primed problems were solved more frequently and significantly faster than unprimed problems. Moreover, when participants were primed during the list study phase, subsequent solution times and rates were considerably superior to those produced by those participants who were simply primed at test. Together, these are the first results to show that false-memory priming during encoding facilitates problem solving in both children and adults

Creative analogy use in a heterogeneous design team: The pervasive role of background domain knowledge

We integrated two research traditions – one focusing on analogical reasoning, the other on knowledge sharing – with the aim of examining how designers’ unique knowledge backgrounds can fuel analogy-based creativity. The present dataset afforded a unique opportunity to pursue this aim since the design dialogue derived from team members with highly disparate educational backgrounds. Our analyses revealed that analogies that matched (versus mismatched) educational backgrounds were generated and revisited more frequently, presumably because they were more accessible. Matching analogies were also associated with increased epistemic uncertainty, perhaps because domain experts appreciate the challenge of mapping such analogies between domains. Our findings support claims from the knowledge-sharing literature for a direct route from knowledge diversity through analogical reasoning to novel idea production

Building a discipline: Indicators of expansion, integration and consolidation in design research across four decades

Highlights • We explored indicators of domain expansion, integration and consolidation in Design Studies. • Author disciplines have expanded into humanities, social science, and human professions. • An increased level of cross-disciplinary collaboration across time is evident. • The term ‘design’ has become increasingly central in stated university affiliations. • Across a 40 year timespan the design domain has consolidated its core foundations

Eye tracking as an MT evaluation technique

Eye tracking has been used successfully as a technique for measuring cognitive load in reading, psycholinguistics, writing, language acquisition etc. for some time now. Its application as a technique for measuring the reading ease of MT output has not yet, to our knowledge, been tested. We report here on a preliminary study testing the use and validity of an eye tracking methodology as a means of semi-automatically evaluating machine translation output. 50 French machine translated sentences, 25 rated as excellent and 25 rated as poor in an earlier human evaluation, were selected. Ten native speakers of French were instructed to read the MT sentences for comprehensibility. Their eye gaze data were recorded non-invasively using a Tobii 1750 eye tracker. The average gaze time and fixation count were found to be higher for the “bad” sentences, while average fixation duration and pupil dilations were not found to be substantially different for output rated as good and output rated as bad. Comparisons between HTER scores and eye gaze data were also found to correlate well with gaze time and fixation count, but not with pupil dilation and fixation duration. We conclude that the eye tracking data, in particular gaze time and fixation count, correlate reasonably well with human evaluation of MT output but fixation duration and pupil dilation may be less reliable indicators of reading difficulty for MT output. We also conclude that eye tracking has promise as a semi-automatic MT evaluation technique, which does not require bi-lingual knowledge, and which can potentially tap into the end users’ experience of machine translation output