A Transitive-Chain Theory of Syllogistic Reasoning.

摘要

The transitive-chain theory of syllogistic reasoning proposes that: (1) information about set relations is represented in memory by pairs of informational components; and (2) information about set relations is integrated by applying a small set of rules to transitive chains that are formed by rearranging informational components stored in memory. The method of rearranging informational components into transitive chains and the rules applied to these chains are specified. The transitive-chain theory is compared to several earlier theories, each of which is cast in terms of an information-processing model. Mathematical models that quantify each of these information-processing models are presented. In a series of five experiments, the transitive-chain theory provides a good account of the response-choice data for syllogisms with various types of content, quantifiers, and logical relations (categorical and conditional). Results of these experiments offer tentative answers to five major issues in syllogistic reasoning theory: (1) Generality of the processes used in syllogistic reasoning; (2) Relationship of syllogistic reasoning ability to intelligence; (3) Representation of and (4) Combination of premise information; and (5) Sources of difficulty in syllogistic reasoning.