Ding Daoqun, Chen Yang, Lai Ji, Chen Xiyou, Han Meng, Zhang Xiangyi
Department of Psychology, School of Education Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China.
Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China.
Front Psychol. 2020 Jan 23;10:2940. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02940. eCollection 2019.
Belief bias is the tendency in syllogistic reasoning to rely on prior beliefs rather than to fully obey logical principles. Few studies have investigated the age effect on belief bias. Although several studies have recently begun to explore this topic, little is known about the psychological mechanisms underlying such an effect. Accordingly, we investigated belief bias in older and young adults and explored the roles of working memory (WM) and need for cognition (NFC) in the relationship between age and reasoning performance. We found that older adults showed a lower accuracy rate compared with young adults when conclusion believability and logical validity were incongruent. However, older adults showed a higher accuracy rate compared with young adults when conclusion believability and logical validity were congruent. The results indicated that in comparison with young adults, prior beliefs hampered logical reasoning more significantly in older adults under incongruent conditions and boosted logical reasoning more significantly under congruent conditions. Moreover, the logic index in older adults was significantly lower than in young adults, and the interaction index of believability and validity in older adults was significantly below zero. Furthermore, NFC mediated the age effect on reasoning performance under the two conditions. By contrast, WM mediated the age effect on reasoning performance only under incongruent conditions and did not act as a mediator under congruent conditions.
信念偏差是指在三段论推理中倾向于依赖先验信念而非完全遵循逻辑原则。很少有研究调查年龄对信念偏差的影响。尽管最近有几项研究开始探讨这个话题，但对于这种影响背后的心理机制却知之甚少。因此，我们调查了老年人和年轻人的信念偏差，并探讨了工作记忆（WM）和认知需求（NFC）在年龄与推理表现关系中的作用。我们发现，当结论可信度与逻辑有效性不一致时，老年人的准确率低于年轻人。然而，当结论可信度与逻辑有效性一致时，老年人的准确率高于年轻人。结果表明，与年轻人相比，在不一致的条件下，先验信念对老年人逻辑推理的阻碍更为显著，而在一致的条件下，对逻辑推理的促进作用更为显著。此外，老年人的逻辑指数显著低于年轻人，老年人中可信度和有效性的交互指数显著低于零。此外，NFC在两种条件下都介导了年龄对推理表现的影响。相比之下，WM仅在不一致的条件下介导了年龄对推理表现的影响，在一致的条件下并未起到中介作用。
