De Neys Research Articles

A tale of two histories: Dual-system architectures in modular perspective.

I draw parallels and contrasts between dual-system and modular approaches to cognition, the latter standing to inherit the same problems De Neys identifies regarding the former. Despite these two literatures rarely coming into contact, I provide one example of how he might gain theoretical leverage on the details of his "non-exclusivity" claim by paying closer attention to the modularity debate.

Logical intuition is not really about logic.

Recent research suggests that reasoners are able to draw simple logical or probabilistic inferences relatively intuitively and automatically, a capacity that has been termed "logical intuition" (see, e.g., De Neys & Pennycook, 2019). A key finding in support of this interpretation is that conclusion validity consistently interferes with judgments of conclusion believability, suggesting that information about logical validity is available quickly enough to interfere with belief judgments. In this study, we examined whether logical intuitions arise because reasoners are sensitive to the logical features of a problem or another structural feature that just happens to align with logical validity. In three experiments (N = 113, 137, and 254), we presented participants with logical (determinate) and pseudological (indeterminate) arguments and asked them to judge the validity or believability of the conclusion. Logical arguments had determinately valid or invalid conclusions, whereas pseudological arguments were all logically indeterminate, but some were pseudovalid (possible strong arguments) and others pseudoinvalid (possible weak arguments). Experiments 1 and 2 used simple modus ponens and affirming the consequent structures; Experiment 3 used more complex denying the antecedent and modus tollens structures. In all three experiments, we found that pseudovalidity interfered with belief judgments to the same extent as real validity. Altogether, these findings suggest that while people are able to draw inferences intuitively, and these inferences impact belief judgments, they are not logical intuitions. Rather, the intuitive inferences are driven by the processing of more superficial structural features that happen to align with logical validity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Reframing Single- and Dual-Process Theories as Cognitive Models: Commentary on De Neys (2021)

De Neys (this issue) argues that the debate between single- and dual-process theorists of thought has become both empirically intractable and scientifically inconsequential. I argue that this is true only under the traditional framing of the debate—when single- and dual-process theories are understood as claims about whether thought processes share the same defining properties (e.g., making mathematical judgments) or have two different defining properties (e.g., making mathematical judgments autonomously versus via access to a central working memory capacity), respectively. But if single- and dual-process theories are understood in cognitive modeling terms as claims about whether thought processes function to implement one or two broad types of algorithms, respectively, then the debate becomes scientifically consequential and, presumably, empirically tractable. So, I argue, the correct response to the current state of the debate is not to abandon it, as De Neys suggests, but to reframe it as a debate about cognitive models.

Substitution Sensitivity and the Bat-and-Ball Problem: A Direct Replication of De Neys et al. (2013)

Background: Cognitive misers are no happy fools. Earlier findings (1) came to this conclusion by assessing people’s sensitivity to attribute substitution, which they defined as the situation that occurs when we are confronted with a problem that demands greater cognitive effort, for which we rely on automatic and intuitive processes that substitute the complex situation for an easier one. Methods: Through the exploration of the “bat-and-ball” problem, (2) De Neys, Rossi, and Houdé (1) found that participants were indeed sensitive to the substitution bias. Specifically, participants who incorrectly answered the question that gave rise to the substitution bias were significantly less confident in their answer relative to their answer on a control problem that did not give rise to the substitution. Using the same methods, we conducted a direct replication study on a sample of 264 undergraduate psychology students. Results and Conclusion: Our results suggest that we successfully replicated the original conclusions; participants who answered by substituting the difficult question for an easier one significantly (p<.0001) decreased their confidence ratings on the version of the problem that gave rise to the substitution bias, relative to the problem that did not. Limitations: Though there may have been limitations, it seems that we are sensitive to attribute substitution.

The Bat-and-Ball Problem: Stronger evidence in support of a conscious error process.

Traditional accounts of reasoning have characterized human error response to be an unconscious process whereby cognitive misers blindly neglect the critical information that would lead to problem solution, thereby substituting an easier problem for the actual problem (e.g., Kahneman & Frederick, 2002). For the bat-and-ball problem, the unconscious substitution hypothesis is challenged on two fronts in the present study: (1) testing for conscious representation of the error-inducing semantic content of the problem (i.e., the "more than" phrase, "The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball."); and (2) comparing experimentally response confidence differences between standard versions of the problem and isomorphic controls (without that phrase) to verify post-decision sensitivity to the errors, following De Neys, Rossi, and Houdé (2013). Crucially, even when interference questions were included between testing and memory response, incorrect reasoners largely had accurate recall and recognition of the problem's error inducing phrase. Incorrect reasoners' intra-individual error sensitivity was replicated and extended via the introduction of a social-metacognitive measurement, which was found to be correlated with intra-individual post-decision confidence and also yielded an error sensitivity effect. Finally, latency responses verify the relationship between time spent reasoning and post-decision confidence. Implications and future directions are discussed.

Scales and scalarity: Processing scalar inferences

Abstract The scalar word ‘some’ may be interpreted with an upper bound, i.e., as excluding ‘all’. Several studies have found that the computation of this scalar inference may be associated with a processing cost (e.g., Bott & Noveck, 2004; De Neys & Schaeken, 2007), which seems to argue in favour of theories according to which pragmatic inferencing is cognitively demanding (e.g., Sperber & Wilson, 1986). This argument holds on the premise that findings for ‘some’ can be generalised across the entire family of scalar words, which has been called into question by recent work highlighting the diversity within the class of scalar words (e.g., van Tiel, van Miltenburg, Zevakhina, & Geurts, 2016). In order to determine how generalisable the findings for ‘some’ are, we conducted three experiments in which we investigated the cognitive processing of seven scalar words that differ, inter alia, in their scalarity, i.e., whether they impose a lower (‘some’, ‘or’, ‘might’, ‘most’, ‘try’) or upper (‘low’, ‘scarce’) bound on their dimension. We find that the scalar inferences of the negatively scalar words ‘low’ and ‘scarce’ are not associated with a processing cost, unlike the scalar inferences of positively scalar words. We argue that the reported processing cost for scalar inferencing reflects increased cognitive demands associated with the processing of negative information.

Behavioral and Neural Evidence on Pragmatic Processing: A Foreword to XPRAG.it

Behavioral and Neural Evidence on Pragmatic Processing: A Foreword to XPRAG.it

Comparison of experienced vs. novice teachers in cognitive reflection and rationality

No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time. Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-GlassWhen dealing with the issue of rational choices, researchers usually come with a rather bleak picture of human rationality - it seems that in most cases we are unable to consistently pick normatively correct choices. It has been shown that people will exert as little mental effort as possible and only rarely check their intuitive, albeit incorrect responses (Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley, & Eyre, 2007; De Neys, Rossi, & Houde, 2013; Sinayev & Peters, 2015). One of the solutions would be to teach people skills that would help them solve rational tasks correctly (mindware; Stanovich, 2011) and thus enhance rationality in everyday life. This suggestion seems very reasonable; however, little research has been done on whether teachers themselves possess this kind of mindware, although we often seem to expect from teachers more than is in their human power.Teachers are very important in education. According to Hattie (2003), factors related to the teacher account for about 30% of the variance in a student?s achievement. He describes a teacher as a ?person who gently closes the classroom door and performs the teaching act - the person who puts into place the end effects of so many policies, who interprets these policies, and who is alone with students during their 15,000 hours of schooling? (Hattie, 2003, p. 2-3). Among the prototypical attributes of expertise in teaching, he lists five that are directly related to the teacher?s decision making, planning and rationality. For example, according to Hattie (2003) an expert teacher, due to extensive practice, is able to rely on automatization of cognitive skills and this enables him/ her to free working memory to deal with other more complex characteristics of the situation. Together with deeper representations about teaching and learning, it also makes the teacher better in recognizing sequences of events occurring in the classroom that in some way affect the learning and teaching of a topic. Thus, the teacher can make better predictions and decisions about the next course of events. Large repertoire of various teaching situations helps him/her to better anticipate, plan, and improvise as required by the situation. Recognizing patterns in these various teaching situations also allows for better decision-making and identification of more or less important decisions. From this brief description it is already clear that what distinguishes an expert teacher from a merely experienced one are the abilities of deeper reflection of the teaching situation, better planning and decision-making. This is in line with findings from studies using expert populations in real life settings (Klein, 1998).Research in education psychology often concentrates on comparing effectiveness of various teaching styles and personality of teachers, but relatively little is known about actual cognitive skills and thinking dispositions of teachers. Thinking dispositions are, however, one of the crucial aspects of rationality with practical consequences. Pennycook, Fugelsang, and Koehler (2015) showed that the mere willingness to engage analytical thinking as means to overcome intuitive ?internal feeling? is a significant predictor of real-world behavior and decision making. For example, more analytical thinkers are more skeptical towards religious, paranormal, and conspiracy concepts. The few studies that have been conducted in Slovakia examining critical thinking of highschool teachers show that teachers of secondary schools achieved unsatisfactory results in critical thinking. Compared to their British counterparts, Slovak teachers scored about 23.10 points lower, and the best Slovak respondent reached only the 20th percentile of the British sample (Kosturkov?, 2013), which is rather an alarming finding. Kosturkov? (2013) used the Watson-Glasser test of critical thinking in her studies, which is a rather long and difficult measure. …

The prospects of working memory training for improving deductive reasoning.

The prospects of working memory training for improving deductive reasoning.

Scalar implicatures: working memory and a comparison with only

A Scalar Implicature (SI) arises when the use of a relatively weak sentence (e.g., some politicians are corrupt) implies the denial of an alternative, stronger sentence (e.g., not all politicians are corrupt). The cognitive effort associated with the processing of SIs involves central memory resources (De Neys and Schaeken, 2007; Dieussaert et al., 2011; Marty et al., 2013). The goal of this study is to locate this previous result within the current psycholinguistic debate, and to understand at which level of SI processing these resources are specifically involved. Using a dual-task approach, we show that (1) tapping participant's memory resources interferes with the derivation of SIs, whereas (2) it does not affect the interpretation of sentences involving similar competition mechanisms between a sentence and potential alternatives through the use of only (e.g., only some politicians are corrupt). We explain how these findings suggest that the central memory resources are not involved in the core process at the source of SIs, and discuss how this difference between SIs and only bears on recent linguistic debates on the division of labor between grammar and pragmatics.

Are we good at detecting conflict during reasoning?

Recent evidence suggests that people are highly efficient at detecting conflicting outputs produced by competing intuitive and analytic reasoning processes. Specifically, De Neys and Glumicic (2008) demonstrated that participants reason longer about problems that are characterized by conflict (as opposed to agreement) between stereotypical personality descriptions and base-rate probabilities of group membership. However, this finding comes from problems involving probabilities much more extreme than those used in traditional studies of base-rate neglect. To test the degree to which these findings depend on such extreme probabilities, we varied base-rate probabilities over five experiments and compared participants’ response time for conflict problems with non-conflict problems. Longer response times for stereotypical responses to conflict versus non-conflict problems were found only in the presence of extreme probabilities. Our results suggest that humans may not be consistently efficient at detecting conflicts during reasoning.

Logic feels so good—I like it! Evidence for intuitive detection of logicality in syllogistic reasoning.

When people evaluate syllogisms, their judgments of validity are often biased by the believability of the conclusions of the problems. Thus, it has been suggested that syllogistic reasoning performance is based on an interplay between a conscious and effortful evaluation of logicality and an intuitive appreciation of the believability of the conclusions (e.g., Evans, Newstead, Allen, & Pollard, 1994). However, logic effects in syllogistic reasoning emerge even when participants are unlikely to carry out a full logical analysis of the problems (e.g., Shynkaruk & Thompson, 2006). There is also evidence that people can implicitly detect the conflict between their beliefs and the validity of the problems, even if they are unable to consciously produce a logical response (e.g., De Neys, Moyens, & Vansteenwegen, 2010). In 4 experiments we demonstrate that people intuitively detect the logicality of syllogisms, and this effect emerges independently of participants' conscious mindset and their cognitive capacity. This logic effect is also unrelated to the superficial structure of the problems. Additionally, we provide evidence that the logicality of the syllogisms is detected through slight changes in participants' affective states. In fact, subliminal affective priming had an effect on participants' subjective evaluations of the problems. Finally, when participants misattributed their emotional reactions to background music, this significantly reduced the logic effect.

The effortless nature of conflict detection during thinking

Dual process theories conceive human thinking as an interplay between heuristic processes that operate automatically and analytic processes that demand cognitive effort. The interaction between these two types of processes is poorly understood. De Neys and Glumicic (2008) recently found that most of the time heuristic processes are successfully monitored. This monitoring, however, would not demand as many cognitive resources as the analytic thinking that is needed to solve reasoning problems. In the present study we tested the crucial assumption about the effortless nature of the monitoring process directly. Participants solved base-rate neglect problems in which heuristic and analytic processes cued a conflicting response or not. Half of the participants reasoned under a secondary task load. A surprise recall task was used as an implicit measure of whether the participants detected the conflict in the problems. Results showed that, even under load, base-rate recall performance was better for conflict problems than for no-conflict problems. Although participants made more reasoning errors under load, recall of the conflict problems was not affected by the working memory load. These findings support the claim about the successful and undemanding nature of the conflict detection process during thinking.

External validation of the computerized, group administrable adaptation of the “operation span task”

One of the most widely used tasks for measuring working memory capacity is the operation span task (OSPAN; Turner & Engle, 1989). This task has almost always been applied individually, and stimuli presentation is controlled by the experimenter. Recently, De Neys, d'Ydewalle, Schaeken, and Vos (2002) improved the administration procedure by designing an automated, group-administrable version of the task (GOSPAN). They found GOSPAN to be reliable, and they also provided evidence on its validity (a significant positive correlation between GOSPAN and OSPAN scores). However, an external test of GOSPAN validity is still lacking. In this work, we present such a validation for the automated version, when the task is administered both individually (Experiment 1) and to groups (Experiment 2). There are abundant previous data on the relation between working memory capacity and reading comprehension. In this work, this relation is studied using an automated OSPAN version to measure working memory capacity. Given that our results are similar to those found using the original OSPAN, our data support the external validity of the automated version of the task. We also tested the reliability of the task and found high internal consistency in both experiments.

ChemInform Abstract: USE OF MELDRUM′S ACIDS IN THE SEMI‐SYNTHESIS OF α‐CARBOXYLATED PENICILLINS AND CEPHALOSPORINS

Chemischer InformationsdienstVolume 9, Issue 19 Heterocyclic Compounds ChemInform Abstract: USE OF MELDRUM′S ACIDS IN THE SEMI-SYNTHESIS OF α-CARBOXYLATED PENICILLINS AND CEPHALOSPORINS P. CROOY, P. CROOYSearch for more papers by this authorR. DE NEYS, R. DE NEYSSearch for more papers by this authorJ. ELIAERS, J. ELIAERSSearch for more papers by this authorR. LIVEYNS, R. LIVEYNSSearch for more papers by this authorG. SIMONET, G. SIMONETSearch for more papers by this authorJ. VANDEVELDE, J. VANDEVELDESearch for more papers by this author P. CROOY, P. CROOYSearch for more papers by this authorR. DE NEYS, R. DE NEYSSearch for more papers by this authorJ. ELIAERS, J. ELIAERSSearch for more papers by this authorR. LIVEYNS, R. LIVEYNSSearch for more papers by this authorG. SIMONET, G. SIMONETSearch for more papers by this authorJ. VANDEVELDE, J. VANDEVELDESearch for more papers by this author First published: May 9, 1978 https://doi.org/10.1002/chin.197819311AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume9, Issue19May 9, 1978 RelatedInformation