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Transitive reasoning

In transitive reasoning, the relationship between inference or reasoni...
Course

 Cognitive Psychology (PSY 460 )

29 Documents
Students shared 29 documents in this course
Academic year: 2019/2020
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DG
Dylan Green
Central Washington University
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TRANSITIVE REASONING

Introduction

Transitive reasoning is a spatial modality or type of deductive reasoning, because the validity of the conclusion is determined not only by the syntactically formal structure of the task, but also, the subject needs some additional knowledge of the world to tell you what the meaning of the relationship expressed in the premises is.

Spatial or relational reasoning problems are used that employ series problems or linear syllogisms.

There are three types of relationships in these problems:

Transitivity Relationships: e. "Study more than"

(a) studies rather than (b)

(b) studies rather than (c)

Do you study (a) more than (c)?

Intransitivity Relationships: e. "Being a Parent of"

(a) is the father of (b)

(b) is the father of (c)

Is (a) the parent of (c)?

Transitivity Ratios: E. "Be friends with"

Ana is a friend of Elisa's

Elisa is Aurora's best friend

Is Ana an actress to Aurora?

The question forces a conclusion to be drawn.

The issues used are known as Series Problems being the most commonly used, the Three-Term Series Problem.

Three-term series problems. Structural features

It consists of two premises, each of which describes a relationship between two elements (such as the examples above).

In the two premises there is a repeating term that is the middle ground and then a question.

The subject has to analyze what is the relationship that exists between the elements not paired in the two premises through their relationship with the common term or the middle term.

The fundamental objective of the research is to analyze how the subjects represent the information included in the premises in order to elaborate relational inference or the conclusion in this type of reasoning, theories are raised related to what the subject when reading the content of the premises:?... does it generate a mental image?

This raises very explicitly the controversy over the representational nature of information. This reasoning seeks just this and thus, different theories or models are raised.

Image Model

Proposed by De Soto, London and Andel, 1976; Huttenlocher, 1968.

It raises the Spatial or Mental Image Hypothesis: when subjects have to reason with three-term series problems what they do is represent the information included in the premises in the form of mental images.

The authors pass to the subjects linear syllogismos and from the results, they developed a series of empirical principles that support their model (they were developed a posteriori), such principles are for example:

Principle of Labour Management proposes that problems in which premises place terms from top to bottom are easier than the other way around (the time it takes to generate the conclusion is assessed).

The argument they give is that, in our culture, we are more accustomed to working up-down (we write from left to right and read from top-down), and therefore it would be easier is the most automated direction.

"It's easier to have problems where the premises place the terms from the top down than the other way around." If not, the time would be the same in both cases and what is noted is that, the second problem is solved faster, and this is what the principle says.

Principle of Anchoring at The Ends problems that begin at one end of the relationship, called the anchor end, are easier than those that begin with the middle; it is therefore more difficult to reason from a premise whose first term refers to an intermediate element.

The second easiest to process.

Who's the best?

Mixed theory on series reasoning

Proposed by Sternberg (1980).

It proposes a combination of the two previous approaches when subjects have to solve linear syllogisms develop linguistic processes and mental images; this, they do, according to the author as follows:

1o) Linguistic processing of information (based on understanding) stated in syllogism.

2o) Spatial processing in terms of mental images once information is understood.

Both processes are necessary to be able to infer the response. Why do we need both processes? The tests are based on chronometric experiments (reaction time) of composite task analysis, which consists of: the author manipulates parameters related to linguistic processing on the one hand and on the other, spatial processing and, see that both, significantly affect reaction times from here, it is inferred that these two processes exist, linguistic and spatial.

Riviere (1984, 1986) criticized Sternberg's approach and proposed an alternative model based on the different levels of representation: shallow and deep.

He says that subjects when they have to solve linear syllogisms, they do not do it in the same way (using linguistic and spatial reasoning) and so, in some it may be more useful to use a spatial representation, for example.

When we reason, what we do is analyze the problem in successive strata or levels of representation, which means that, we tend to resort or use deeper representations, only when superficial ones fail.

What is the difference between the two models? For Sternberg first an understanding is made and then, a representation, Riviere says that it depends, sometimes it is more useful one or another thing.

Conclusions

In transitive reasoning, the relationship between inference or reasoning and representation becomes particularly important.

It is fundamentally studied how the representation of information is (finding out how the subject captures information and representation of the content).

Each of the theories that have been generated in the field of transitive reasoning comes from a different conception of the system of representation of knowledge in the human mind.

Linguistic-propositional models defend a fundamentally linguistic representation while mental image theory, in terms of mental images and mixed theory, defends representation in both terms, linguistic and mental images.

According to Johnson-Laird (1972) in fact, neither of the two models themselves provides sufficient experimental data, to be able to opt for either one or the other.

The first psychological model developed for the study of linear syllogisms was Hunter's (1957); this model proposes that in order to perform (resolve) a linear syllogism, two conditions must be met:

1a) the premises must include the same relationship

2a) that the middle ground is the predicate of the first premise and the subject of the second.

What happens when one of the conditions is not met? The subject can apply two different types of operations in order to be able to integrate the information of the two premises and come to a conclusion; that's why this model is called hunter's Operational Model.

The two operations are:

Conversion operation if once the premises are read, and a representation of the first premise is elaborated, the subject cannot integrate the information of the second premise by removing the middle ground, what it does is convert the second premise to be integrable.

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Transitive reasoning

Course:  Cognitive Psychology (PSY 460 )

29 Documents
Students shared 29 documents in this course

University: Central Washington University

Was this document helpful?
TRANSITIVE REASONING
Introduction
Transitive reasoning is a spatial modality or type of deductive reasoning, because
the validity of the conclusion is determined not only by the syntactically formal
structure of the task, but also, the subject needs some additional knowledge of the
world to tell you what the meaning of the relationship expressed in the premises is.
Spatial or relational reasoning problems are used that employ series problems or
linear syllogisms.
There are three types of relationships in these problems:
Transitivity Relationships: e.g. "Study more than"
(a) studies rather than (b)
(b) studies rather than (c)
Do you study (a) more than (c)?
Intransitivity Relationships: e.g. "Being a Parent of"
(a) is the father of (b)
(b) is the father of (c)
Is (a) the parent of (c)?
Transitivity Ratios: E.g. "Be friends with"
Ana is a friend of Elisa's
Elisa is Aurora's best friend
Is Ana an actress to Aurora?
The question forces a conclusion to be drawn.
The issues used are known as Series Problems being the most commonly used,
the Three-Term Series Problem.
Three-term series problems. Structural features
It consists of two premises, each of which describes a relationship between two
elements (such as the examples above).
In the two premises there is a repeating term that is the middle ground and then a
question.

Students also viewed

Related documents