Oberauer, Klaus; Wilhelm, Oliver:
Effects of directionality in deductive reasoning: I. The comprehension of single relational premises.
In: Journal of Experimental Psychology - Learning, Memory, and Cognition, Jg. 26 (2000), Heft 6, S. 1702 - 1712
2000Artikel/Aufsatz in Zeitschrift
PsychologieFakultät für Bildungswissenschaften » Institut für Psychologie
Titel:
Effects of directionality in deductive reasoning: I. The comprehension of single relational premises.
Autor*in:
Oberauer, Klaus;Wilhelm, OliverUDE
LSF ID
51793
Sonstiges
der Hochschule zugeordnete*r Autor*in
Erscheinungsjahr:
2000

Abstract:

Investigated the pervasiveness of directionality in single relational premises and the hypothesis that there is a general preference for processing the reference object before the target object in several domains of deductive reasoning. In four experiments, a total of 130 college students (mean age 22.8 years) completed sentence-picture verification tasks testing the comprehension of spatial relations, quantified statements, and propositional connectives. In each case, following presentation of a verbal statement, the referents of the terms in the statement were presented pictorially, 1 s apart, in an order congruent or incongruent with the order of terms in the statement. Verification times were found to be faster for congruent display order in some cases, but a reversed or no directionality effect was found in others. In each case, the findings can be explained in terms of a proposed two-step model for the construction of semantic representations of relational statements, in which a reference object is established first and the second object is attached in relation to it.