Newstead S E, Handley S J, Buck E
Department of Psychology, University of Plymouth, England.
Mem Cognit. 1999 Mar;27(2):344-54. doi: 10.3758/bf03211418.
Four experiments are reported that tested the claim, drawn from mental models theory, that reasoners attempt to construct alternative representations of problems that might falsify preliminary conclusions they have drawn. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to indicate which alternative conclusion(s) they had considered in a syllogistic reasoning task. In Experiments 2-4, participants were asked to draw diagrams consistent with the premises, on the assumption that these diagrams would provide insights into the mental representation being used. In none of the experiments was there any evidence that people constructed more models for multiple-model than for single-model syllogisms, nor was there any correlation between number of models constructed and overall accuracy. The results are interpreted as showing that falsification of the kind proposed by mental models theory may not routinely occur in reasoning.
本文报告了四项实验，这些实验检验了从心理模型理论得出的一种观点，即推理者试图构建问题的替代表征，这些表征可能会证伪他们得出的初步结论。在实验1中，要求参与者指出在三段论推理任务中他们考虑过哪些替代结论。在实验2至4中，要求参与者绘制与前提一致的图表，假定这些图表能提供对所使用心理表征的洞察。在任何一个实验中，都没有证据表明人们为多模型三段论构建的模型比单模型三段论更多，构建的模型数量与总体准确性之间也没有任何关联。这些结果被解释为表明心理模型理论所提出的那种证伪在推理过程中可能不会经常发生。
