Dk. Hardman et Sj. Payne, PROBLEM DIFFICULTY AND RESPONSE FORMAT IN SYLLOGISTIC REASONING, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology, 48(4), 1995, pp. 945-975
It was hypothesized that the perceived irrelevance of the proposition
''Some X are not Y'' is a factor contributing to the difficulty of nea
rly all the determinate syllogisms classed as multiple model by Johnso
n-Laird and Byrne (1991), according to mental models theory. Experimen
t 1 supported this hypothesis by showing that subjects frequently corr
ectly evaluate valid ''Some...not'' conclusions but rarely produce the
m, even when they have evaluated them elsewhere. Explanations of these
findings based on the use of superficial strategies were ruled out. E
xperiment 2 further supported the hypothesis by showing that performan
ce increased across the no-conclusion, multiple-choice, and evaluation
task formats, and that this effect generalized to problems containing
the quantifier ''only''. However, the initial hypothesis was rejected
in light of Experiment 3, which found no difference between multiple-
choice and no-conclusion formats when the number of allowable conclusi
ons was controlled for. Nevertheless, superior performance remained in
the evaluation format, and it is suggested that offered conclusions m
ay be used as a goal for the reasoning process. This interpretation is
supported by the finding (Experiments 1 and 3) that subjects appear t
o search only for alternative conclusions that maintain the subject-pr
edicate structure of the offered conclusion.