Reasoning Strategies

Abstract

The recent study of human reasoning has focused on the nature and development of control strategies in deduction. Attention has shifted from the unconscious cognitive processes underlying deduction to the higher-level control strategies that reasoners develop to make meta-deductions. The change in emphasis heralds new advances in understanding how adult reasoners improve their reasoning skill spontaneously. We describe the results of some of our recent experiments and computational simulations of human reasoning and we discuss their implications for understanding human cognition.