Kroger J K, Cheng P W, Holyoak K J
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles 90024-1563.
Q J Exp Psychol A. 1993 Nov;46(4):615-35. doi: 10.1080/14640749308401030.
Cheng and Holyoak (1985) proposed that realistic reasoning in deontic contexts is based on pragmatic schemas such as those for assessing compliance with or violation of permission and obligation rules, and that the evocation of these schemas can facilitate performance in Wason's (1966) selection task. The inferential rules in such schemas are intermediate in generality between the content-independent rules proposed by logicians and specific cases stored in memory. In one test of their theory, Cheng and Holyoak demonstrated that facilitation could be obtained even for an abstract permission rule that is devoid of concrete thematic content. Jackson and Griggs (1990) argued on the basis of several experiments that such facilitation is not due to evocation of a permission schema, but, rather, results from a combination of presentation factors: the presence of explicit negatives in the statement of cases and the presence of a violation-checking context. Their conclusion calls into question both the generality of content effects in reasoning and the explanation of these effects. We note that Jackson and Griggs did not test whether the same combination of presentation factors would produce facilitation for an arbitrary rule that does not involve deontic concepts, as their proposal would predict. The present study tested this prediction. Moreover, we extended Jackson and Griggs' comparisons between performance with an abstract permission rule versus an arbitrary rule, introducing clarifications in the statement of each. No facilitation was observed for an arbitrary rule even when explicit negatives and a violation-checking context were used, whereas strong facilitation was found for the abstract permission rule under the same conditions. Performance on the arbitrary rule was not improved even when the instructions indicated that the rule was conditional rather than biconditional. In contrast, a small but reliable degree of facilitation was obtained for the abstract permission rule, with violation-checking content even in the absence of explicit negatives. The theory of pragmatic reasoning schemas can account for both the present findings and those reported by Jackson and Griggs.
程和霍利约克（1985）提出，道义情境中的现实推理基于语用图式，比如那些用于评估是否遵守或违反许可和义务规则的图式，并且这些图式的唤起能够促进在沃森（1966）选择任务中的表现。此类图式中的推理规则在普遍性上介于逻辑学家提出的与内容无关的规则和存储在记忆中的具体案例之间。在对他们理论的一项测试中，程和霍利约克证明，即使对于一个没有具体主题内容的抽象许可规则，也能获得促进作用。杰克逊和格里格斯（1990）基于多项实验认为，这种促进作用并非源于许可图式的唤起，而是由呈现因素的组合导致的：案例陈述中存在明确的否定以及存在违反检查的情境。他们的结论对推理中内容效应的普遍性以及对这些效应的解释都提出了质疑。我们注意到，杰克逊和格里格斯并没有测试他们的提议所预测的，相同的呈现因素组合是否会对不涉及道义概念的任意规则产生促进作用。本研究对这一预测进行了测试。此外，我们扩展了杰克逊和格里格斯对抽象许可规则与任意规则表现的比较，对每条规则的陈述都进行了澄清。即使使用了明确的否定和违反检查的情境，任意规则也未观察到促进作用，而在相同条件下，抽象许可规则则有显著的促进作用。即使指令表明规则是条件性的而非双条件性的，任意规则的表现也没有得到改善。相比之下，抽象许可规则即使在没有明确否定的情况下，有违反检查内容时也获得了小但可靠的促进程度。语用推理图式理论能够解释本研究结果以及杰克逊和格里格斯所报告的结果。
