Lance Rips describes a unified theory of natural deductive reasoning and fashions a working model of deduction, with strong experimental support, that is capable of playing a central role in mental life. In this provocative book, Lance Rips describes a unified theory of natural deductive reasoning and fashions a working model of deduction, with strong experimental support, that is capable of playing a central role in mental life. Rips argues that certain inference principles are so central to our notion of intelligence and rationality that they deserve serious psychological investigation to determine their role in individuals' beliefs and conjectures. Asserting that cognitive scientists should consider deductive reasoning as a basis for thinking, Rips develops a theory of natural reasoning abilities and shows how it predicts mental successes and failures in a range of cognitive tasks. In parts I and II of the book, Rips builds insights from cognitive psychology, logic, and artificial intelligence into a unified theoretical structure. He defends the idea that deduction depends on the ability to construct mental proofs—actual memory units that link given information to conclusions it warrants. From this base Rips develops a computational model of deduction based on two cognitive skills: the ability to make suppositions or assumptions and the ability to posit sub-goals for conclusions. A wide variety of original experiments support this model, including studies of human subjects evaluating logical arguments as well as following and remembering proofs. Unlike previous theories of mental proof, this one handles names and variables in a general way. This capability enables deduction to play a crucial role in other thought processes, such as classifying and problem solving. In part III, Rips compares the theory to earlier approaches in psychology which confined the study of deduction to a small group of tasks, and examines whether the theory is too rational or too irrational in its mode of thought.

The area of psychological research reviewed in this book is one that is not only increasing in popularity in college curricula, but is also making an ever larger impact on the world outside the classroom. Drawing upon research originally cited in Ken Manktelow’s highly successful publication Reasoning and Thinking, this completely rewritten textbook reflects on the revolutionary changes that have occurred in the field in recent years, stemming from the huge expansion in research output, as well as new methods and explanations, and the appearance of numerous books on the subject aimed at the popular market. The main areas covered are probability judgment, deductive and inductive reasoning, decision making, hypothetical thinking and rationality. In each case, the material is almost entirely new, with topics such as the new paradigm in reasoning research, causal reasoning and counterfactual thinking appearing for the first time. The book also presents an extended treatment of decision making research, and contains a chapter on individual and cultural influences on thinking. Thinking and Reasoning provides a detailed, integrated and approachable treatment of this area of cognitive psychology, and is ideal reading for intermediate and advanced undergraduate students; indeed, for anyone interested in how we draw conclusions and make choices.

Over the past decade, the question of whether there is a mental logic has become subject to considerable debate. There have been attacks by critics who believe that all reasoning uses mental models and return attacks on mental-models theory. This controversy has invaded various journals and has created issues between mental logic and the biases-and-heuristics approach to reasoning, and the content-dependent theorists. However, despite its pertinence to current issues in cognition, few cognitive scientists really know what the mental-logic theory is, and misapprehensions are prevalent. This volume is a comprehensive presentation of the theory of mental logic and its implications for cognition and development, including the acquisition of language. The theory offered here has three parts. Part I is the mental logic per se that contains a set of inference schemas. Part II is a reasoning program that applies the schemas in lines of reasoning, including a direct-reasoning routine and more sophisticated indirect-reasoning strategies. Part III of the theory is pragmatic, proposing that the basic meaning of each logic particle is in the inferences that are sanctioned by its inference schemas.

This undergraduate textbook reviews psychological research in the major areas of reasoning and thinking: deduction, induction, hypothesis testing, probability judgement, and decision making. It also covers the major theoretical debates in each area, and devotes a chapter to one of the liveliest issues in the field: the question of human rationality. Central themes that recur throughout the book include not only rationality, but also the relation between normative theories such as logic, probability theory, and decision theory, and human performance, both in experiments and in the world outside the laboratory. No prior acquaintance with formal systems is assumed, and everyday examples are used throughout to illustrate technical and theoretical points. The book differs from others in the market firstly in the range of material covered: other tend to focus primarily on on either reasoning or thinking. It is also the first student-level text to survey an imporatant new theoretical perspective, the information-gain or rational analysis approach, and to review the rationality debate from the standpoint of psuchological research in a wide range of areas.

In the past decade, enormous strides have been made in understanding the human brain. The advent of sophisticated new imaging techniques (e.g. PET, MRI, MEG, etc.) and new behavioral testing procedures have revolutionized our understanding of the brain, and we now know more about the anatomy, functions, and development of this organ than ever before. However, much of this knowledge is scattered across scientific journals and books in a diverse group of specialties: psychology, neuroscience, medicine, etc. The Encyclopedia of the Human Brain places all information in a single source and contains clearly written summaries on what is known of the human brain. Covering anatomy, physiology, neuropsychology, clinical neurology, neuropharmacology, evolutionary biology, genetics, and behavioral science, this four-volume encyclopedia contains over 200 peer reviewed signed articles from experts around the world. The Encyclopedia articles range in size from 5-30 printed pages each, and contain a definition paragraph, glossary, outline, and suggested readings, in addition to the body of the article. Lavishly illustrated, the Encyclopedia includes over 1000 figures, many in full color. Managing both breadth and depth, the Encyclopedia is a must-have reference work for life science libraries and researchers investigating the human brain.

A cutting-edge reference source for the interdisciplinary field of computational cognitive modeling.

This book is the first to introduce the study of cognition in terms of the major conceptual themes that underlie virtually all the substantive topics.