How to make a participant logical: The role of premise presentation in a conditional reasoning task
Résumé
Abstract
We report one experiment (N=32) which presented 40 conditional arguments of the valid form Modus Ponens (If Jean goes to the cinema then he takes his bicycle; He goes to the cinema. //Jean takes his bicycle) or the invalid form Affirmation of the Consequent (If Jean goes to the cinema then he takes his bicycle; He takes his bicycle. //Jean goes to the cinema). Each of these arguments was distorted about half the time by changing the final word of the conclusion so that even a Modus Ponens argument could be rendered "not logical" (e.g. by changing the word bicycle in the conclusion to bus). Participants received the arguments in one of two manners: sentence-by-sentence or word-by-word. Rates of correct evaluations to non-distorted Affirmation of Consequent arguments were significantly higher among participants who received them word-by-word. This shows that typical participants can be encouraged to provide normative responses to invalid arguments without changes to content or specific cues.