Formal Models of Reasoning in Cognitive Psychology

摘要

This special issue offers a broad range of papers showcasing the way cognitive psychologists use formal models to guide their theoretical and experimental investigations of human reasoning. The timing could not be more appropriate, for the psychology of reasoning is at a time when formal models are at the forefront of contemporary research. The psychology of reasoning was long characterized by an extreme focus on deductive reasoning, to such an extent that it could almost be identified with the psychology of deduction (Evans 2006). Since the founding result of the field was that people did poorly on simple deductive tasks (Wason 1968; Wason and Brooks 1979), researchers were generally suspicious about the relevance of formal models to their work. More specifically, it seemed that classic deductive logic, which had long stood as the natural formalism on which to model human reasoning, could not do a proper job after all.