Department of Psychology, Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany.
Department of Psychology, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2020 Oct;73(10):1703-1717. doi: 10.1177/1747021820922509. Epub 2020 Jun 2.
Sequential abductive reasoning is the process of finding the best explanation for a set of observations. Explanations can be multicausal and require the retrieval of previously found ones from memory. The theory of abductive reasoning (TAR) allows detailed predictions on what information is stored and retrieved from memory during reasoning. In the research to date, however, these predictions have never been directly tested. In this study, we tested process assumptions such as the construction of a mental representation from TAR using memory indexing, an eye-tracking method that makes it possible to trace the retrieval of explanations currently held in working memory. Gaze analysis revealed that participants encode the presented evidence (i.e., observations) together with possible explanations into memory. When new observations are presented, the previously presented evidence and explanations are retrieved. Observations that are not explained immediately are encoded as abstractly explained. Abstract explanations enter a refinement process in which they become concrete before they enter the situation model. With the memory indexing method, we were able to assess the process of information retrieval in abductive reasoning, which was previously believed to be unobservable. We discuss the results in the light of TAR and other current theories on the diagnostic reasoning process.
溯因推理是一种为一组观察结果寻找最佳解释的过程。解释可以是多因果的，需要从记忆中检索先前找到的解释。溯因推理理论（TAR）允许对推理过程中从记忆中存储和检索的信息进行详细预测。然而，迄今为止，这些预测从未被直接检验过。在这项研究中，我们使用记忆索引测试了 TAR 的一些过程假设，如从 TAR 构建心理表征，记忆索引是一种眼动追踪方法，它可以追踪当前在工作记忆中持有的解释的检索。注视分析表明，参与者将呈现的证据（即观察结果）与可能的解释一起编码到记忆中。当呈现新的观察结果时，会检索先前呈现的证据和解释。未立即解释的观察结果被编码为抽象解释。抽象解释进入一个细化过程，在这个过程中，它们在进入情境模型之前变得具体。通过记忆索引方法，我们能够评估溯因推理中信息检索的过程，而这一过程以前被认为是不可观察的。我们根据 TAR 和其他当前关于诊断推理过程的理论讨论了结果。
