Deductive reasoning is widely regarded as an activity central to human intelligence, and as such has attracted a large amount of psychological study. In this survey of the field, the authors provide a detailed and balanced review of all the main kinds of deductive reasoning tasks studied by psychologists. Topics covered include conditional and disjunctive reasoning, the Wason selection task, relational inference, and reasoning with syllogisms and quantifiers.; Throughout the review, a distinction is drawn between the main empirical findings in the field and the major theoretical approaches proposed to account for these findings. Discussion of experimental findings is organized around three central questions: what is the extent and limitation of human competence in deductive reasoning?; what factors are responsible for systematic errors and biases on reasoning tasks?; and how is human reasoning influenced by the content in which logical problems are presented?; Four major classes of theory are discussed throughout the book. The long-established theory that people have a mental logic comprised of formal rules of inference is contrasted particularly with the more recently developed mental model theory of deductive reasoning. Explanations of many phenomena, especially biases, are also considered in terms of heuristic processes. Finally, consideration is given to accounts of content and context effects based upon the use of domain-sensitive rules or schemas.; The book ends with a discussion of research on deductive reasoning in the context of the debate about human rationality.

Thinking, Reasoning, and Decision Making in Autism provides fresh insights into the cognitive processes that underlie some of the typical characteristics of autism. Autism has long been considered an enigma, and no single theory so far has been able to explain, or even fully describe, the key characteristics of the autistic mind. From the interdisciplinary perspective of new research in cognitive psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and neuroscience, this book explores thinking, reasoning, and decision making in autism. The new cognitive approaches challenge some of the existing assumptions of the nature of thought in autism, including presumed areas of impairments. Instead, this book focuses on the nuanced array of cognitive signatures that characterize the autistic mind, and in many cases it reveals the possibility of intact performance alongside instances of remarkably enhanced thinking. The book considers the implications of these characteristics, providing in-depth analyses of specific areas of cognitive functioning, and their everyday manifestations. Featuring contributions from world-leading researchers from the fields of cognitive science and autism research, this volume will be essential reading for advanced students and researchers, as well as those working with individuals with autism spectrum disorders.

Thinking, Reasoning, and Decision Making in Autism provides fresh insights into the cognitive processes that underlie some of the typical characteristics of autism. Autism has long been considered an enigma, and no single theory so far has been able to explain, or even fully describe, the key characteristics of the autistic mind. From the interdisciplinary perspective of new research in cognitive psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and neuroscience, this book explores thinking, reasoning, and decision making in autism. The new cognitive approaches challenge some of the existing assumptions of the nature of thought in autism, including presumed areas of impairments. Instead, this book focuses on the nuanced array of cognitive signatures that characterize the autistic mind, and in many cases it reveals the possibility of intact performance alongside instances of remarkably enhanced thinking. The book considers the implications of these characteristics, providing in-depth analyses of specific areas of cognitive functioning, and their everyday manifestations. Featuring contributions from world-leading researchers from the fields of cognitive science and autism research, this volume will be essential reading for advanced students and researchers, as well as those working with individuals with autism spectrum disorders.

The human imagination remains one of the last uncharted terrains of the mind. This accessible and original monograph explores a central aspect of the imagination, the creation of counterfactual alternatives to reality, and claims that imaginative thoughts are guided by the same principles that underlie rational thoughts. Research has shown that rational thought is more imaginative than cognitive scientists had supposed; in "The Rational Imagination," Ruth Byrne argues that imaginative thought is more rational than scientists have imagined.

People often create alternatives to reality and imagine how events might have turned out "if only" something had been different. Byrne explores the "fault lines" of reality, the aspects of reality that are more readily changed in imaginative thoughts. She finds that our tendencies to imagine alternatives to actions, controllable events, socially unacceptable actions, causal and enabling relations, and events that come last in a temporal sequence provide clues to the cognitive processes upon which the counterfactual imagination depends. The explanation of these processes, Byrne argues, rests on the idea that imaginative thought and rational thought have much in common.