Although widely studied in other domains, relatively little is known about the metacognitive processes that monitor and control behaviour during reasoning and decision-making. In this paper, we examined the conditions under which two fluency cues are used to monitor initial reasoning: answer fluency, or the speed with which the initial, intuitive answer is produced, and perceptual fluency, or the ease with which problems can be read. The first two experiments demonstrated that answer fluency reliably predicted Feeling of Rightness judgments to (...) conditional inferences and base rate problems, which subsequently predicted the amount of deliberate processing as measured by thinking time and answer changes; answer fluency also predicted retrospective confidence judgments. Moreover, the effect of answer fluency on reasoning was independent from the effect of perceptual fluency, establishing that these are empirically independent constructs. In five experiments with a variety of reasoning problems similar to those of Alter et al., we found no effect of perceptual fluency on FOR, retrospective confidence or accuracy; however, we did observe that participants spent more time thinking about hard to read stimuli, although this additional time did not result in answer changes. In our final two experiments, we found that perceptual disfluency increased accuracy on the CRT, but only amongst participants of high cognitive ability. As Alter et al.’s samples were gathered from prestigious universities, collectively, the data to this point suggest that perceptual fluency prompts additional processing in general, but this processing may results in higher accuracy only for the most cognitively able. (shrink)

A major challenge for Dual Process Theories of reasoning is to predict the circumstances under which intuitive answers reached on the basis of Type 1 processing are kept or discarded in favour of analytic, Type 2 processing (Thompson 2009 ). We propose that a key determinant of the probability that Type 2 processes intervene is the affective response that accompanies Type 1 processing. This affective response arises from the fluency with which the initial answer is produced, such that fluently produced (...) answers give rise to a strong feeling of rightness. This feeling of rightness, in turn, determines the extent and probability with which Type 2 processes will be engaged. Because many of the intuitions produced by Type 1 processes are fluent, it is common for them to be accompanied by a strong sense of rightness. However, because fluency is poorly calibrated to objective difficulty, confidently held intuitions may form the basis of poor quality decisions. (shrink)

We applaud many aspects of Elqayam & Evans' (E&E's) call for a descriptivist research programme in studying reasoning. Nevertheless, we contend that normative benchmarks are vital for understanding individual differences in performance. We argue that the presence of normative responses to particular problems by certain individuals should inspire researchers to look for converging evidence for analytic processing that may have a normative basis.

(2013). Matching bias in syllogistic reasoning: Evidence for a dual-process account from response times and confidence ratings. Thinking & Reasoning: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 54-77. doi: 10.1080/13546783.2012.735622.

1. Overconfidence is usually understood as being more confident than reality justifies (Harvey, 1997; Moore & Healy, 2008; Pompian, 2006), which leads individuals to overestimate their performance...

Normative theories can be useful in developing descriptive theories, as when normative subjective expected utility theory is used to develop descriptive rational choice theory and behavioral game theory. “Ought” questions are also the essence of theories of moral reasoning, a domain of higher mental processing that could not survive without normative considerations.

Recent research shows that in reasoning tasks, subjects usually produce an initial intuitive answer, accompanied by a metacognitive experience, which has been called feeling of rightness. This paper is aimed at exploring the complimentary experience of feeling of error, that is, the spontaneous, subtle sensation of cognitive uneasiness arising from conflict detection during thinking. We investigate FOE in two studies with the “bat-and-ball” reasoning task, in its standard and isomorphic control versions. Study 1 is a generation study, in which participants (...) are asked to generate their own response. Study 2 is an evaluation study, in which participants are asked to choose between two conflicting answers. In each study, the FOE is measured by the FOE questionnaire. Results show that the FOE is significantly present in the standard B&B task when participants give a wrong answer, that our questionnaire can measure it, and furthermore, that it is diagnostic of genuine error. (shrink)

The feeling of error (FOE) is the subjective experience that something went wrong during a reasoning or calculation task. The main goal of the present study was to assess the accuracy of the FOE in the context of mental mathematical calculation. We used the number bisection task (NBT) to evoke this metacognitive feeling and assessed it by asking participants if they felt they have committed an error after solving the task. In the NBT participants have to determine whether the number (...) presented in the middle of a triplet corresponds to the arithmetic mean of the two outer numbers (e.g., 07_16_25) with a Yes/No answer. Our results show that FOE reports were strongly correlated with arithmetic errors and numerical properties of the NBT, suggesting that the FOE accurately represents the error. This finding indicates that even very fast metacognitive feelings are reliable when it comes to evaluating one’s own mental performance. Moreover, our results suggest that the occurrence of FOEs is determined by the fluency with which each triplet was solved and the post-decision evaluation processes that occurred after the NBT was solved. Additionally, we asked participants to report their confidence in the given answer for the cases where they did not report FOEs. Participants reported less confidence for the (objectively) incorrect answers than for the (objectively) correct ones, suggesting that in cases where they did not have a conscious FOE they still were able to implicitly detect their errors. Remarkably, confidence was also determined by the fluency of the NBT. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn two experiments, we examined the resolution of confidence judgments in syllogistic reasoning and their heuristic bases. Based on the assumptions of Koriat's Self-Consistency Model of confidence, we expected the confidence judgments to be related to conclusion consensuality, reflecting the role of consistency as a heuristic cue to confidence. In Experiment 1, the participants evaluated 24 syllogisms with conclusions that varied with respect to validity and consensuality. In Experiment 2, the participants produced conclusions to 64 pairs of premises. The correlation (...) between confidence and reasoning accuracy was low. In both experiments confidence was related to the consensuality of the responses. For consensually correct items, correlation between confidence and accuracy was positive; however, for consensually incorrect items it was negative. In Experiment 2, confidence was lower for syllogisms with higher response cardinality, or syllogisms that elicited a greater variety of conclusions. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists have revealed systematic errors in human reasoning. There is disagreement about what these errors indicate about human rationality, but one upshot seems clear: human reasoning does not seem to fit traditional views of human rationality. This concern about rationality has made its way through various fields and has recently caught the attention of philosophers. The concern is that if philosophers are prone to systematic errors in reasoning, then the integrity of philosophy would be threatened. In this paper, I (...) present some of the more famous work in cognitive science that has marshaled this concern. Then I present reasons to think that those with training in philosophy will be less prone to certain systematic errors in reasoning. The suggestion is that if philosophers could be shown to be less prone to such errors, then the worries about the integrity of philosophy could be constrained. Then I present evidence that, according to performance on the CRT (Frederick 2005), those who have benefited from training and selection in philosophy are indeed less prone to one kind of systematic error: irrationally arbitrating between intuitive and reflective responses. Nonetheless, philosophers are not entirely immune to this systematic error, and their proclivity for this error is statistically related to their responses to a variety of philosophical questions. So, while the evidence herein puts constraints on the worries about the integrity of philosophy, it by no means eliminates these worries. The conclusion, then, is that the present evidence offers prima facie reasons to ascribe a mitigated privilege to philosophers' ability to rationally arbitrate between intuitive and reflective responses. (shrink)