Much recent research and theorizing in the field of reasoning has been concerned with intuitive sensitivity to logical validity, such as the logic-brightness effect, in which logically valid arguments are judged to have a "brighter" typeface than invalid arguments. We propose and test a novel signal competition account of this…

The aim of this study is to examine preservice mathematics teachers' proving skills in an incorrect statement. In this way, it was tried to examine their reasoning and proving skills about the correctness of the given mathematical expression. The case study, one of the qualitative research designs, was adopted in the study. The participants of the…

Four experiments examined the claims that people can intuitively assess the logical validity of arguments, and that qualitatively different reasoning processes drive intuitive and explicit validity assessments. In each study participants evaluated arguments varying in validity and believability using either deductive criteria (logic task) or via…

According to Geary's evolutionary approach, humans are able to easily acquire primary knowledge and, with more efforts, secondary knowledge. The present study investigates how primary knowledge contents can facilitate the learning of formal logical rules, i.e., secondary knowledge. Framing formal logical problems in evolutionary salient contexts…

Syllogisms with missing conclusions, missing minor and major premises, as well as missing negative conclusion and missing conclusion to a class chain, were given to 160 gifted children (20 each from ages 4-11) to investigate the order of difficulty of certain principles of logic and the age at which these principles are acquired. (MP)

Testing the hypothesis that although a complex paragraph takes longer to read than a simple paragraph, there is no difference in the time taken to make the required inference from memory. (MB)

This study is the fourth in a series of studies that have attempted to examine the relationship between two separate aptitude factors--associative memory and reasoning--to various performance criteria in a hierarchical learning task utilizing computer-assisted instruction. Two clear effects seem to emerge from the data. During learning, the…