Valerie Thompson

• PhD
• Professor at University of Saskatchewan

Previous research has demonstrated that reasoners’ Feeling of Rightness (FOR) for a quick, intuitive responses predicts the amount of analytic thinking they give to slower, more considered responses operationalized in terms of the length of thinking time and the probability of answer changes (Thompson et al., Cognitive Psychology, 63 (3), 107–140,...

Mental model (Johnson-Laird, 2001) and probabilistic theories (Oaksford & Chater, 2009) claim to provide distinct explanations of human reasoning. However, the dual strategy model of reasoning suggests that this distinction corresponds to different reasoning strategies, termed counterexample and statistical, respectively. There is clear evidence th...

De Neys proposed a "switch" model to address what he argued to be lacuna in dual-process theory, in which he theorized about the processes that initiate and terminate analytic thinking. We will argue that the author neglected to acknowledge the abundant literature on metacognitive functions, specifically, the meta-reasoning framework developed by A...

Recent research suggests that reasoners are able to draw simple logical or probabilistic inferences relatively intuitively and automatically, a capacity that has been termed "logical intuition" (see, e.g., De Neys & Pennycook, 2019). A key finding in support of this interpretation is that conclusion validity consistently interferes with judgments o...

The dual strategy model posits that reasoners rely on two information processing strategies when making inferences: The statistical strategy generates a rapid probabilistic estimate based on associative access to a wide array of information, and the counterexample strategy uses a more focused representation allowing for a search for potential count...

How and why do people comply with protective behaviours during COVID-19? The emerging literature employs a variable-centered approach, typically using a narrow selection of constructs within a study. This study is the first to adopt a person-centred approach to identify complex patterns of compliance, and holistically examine underlying psychologic...

Recent research suggest that reasoners are able to draw simple logical or probabilistic inferences relatively intuitively and automatically, a capacity which has been termed “logical intuition” (see, for example, De Neys & Pennycook, 2019). A key finding in support of this interpretation is that conclusion validity consistently interferes with judg...

This study tested the relationship between strategy use (assessed by eye-gaze patterns), cognitive ability (CA), and reasoning performance on a ratio-bias task. For the ratio-bias problems, participants (N = 125) chose which of two ratios was larger; each ratio was represented both as a fraction and as a picture. Problems were solved in two blocks:...

Cognitive capacity is commonly assumed to predict performance in classic reasoning tasks because people higher in cognitive capacity are believed to be better at deliberately correcting biasing erroneous intuitions. However, recent findings suggest that there can also be a positive correlation between cognitive capacity and correct intuitive thinki...

The dual strategy model proposes that people use one of two potential ways of processing information when making inferences. The statistical strategy generates a rapid probabilistic estimate based on associative access to a wide array of information, while the counterexample strategy uses a more focused representation, allowing for a search for pot...

A common explanation for individual differences in the ability to draw rule-based inferences, when a putative conclusion suggests a competing belief-based inference, is that the ability to do so depends on working memory capacity. In the following studies, we examined the hypothesis that the ability to draw rule-based inferences in belief bias task...

Feeling of Rightness (FOR) is a metacognitive experience accompanying people's intuitive answers that predicts the probability of subsequently changing answers (Thompson, Prowse Turner, & Pennycook, 2011). Previous research suggested FOR judgments are influenced by cues such as fluency, i.e., the ease with which an answer comes to mind. In the curr...

There is much evidence that high-capacity reasoners perform better on a variety of reasoning tasks (Stanovich, 1999), a phenomenon that is normally attributed to differences in either the efficacy or the probability of deliberate (Type II) engagement (Evans, 2007). In contrast, we hypothesized that intuitive (Type I) processes may differentiate hig...

How accomplished does one need to be to compete in the Canadian cognitive psychology job market? We looked at the publication record of everyone who was hired as an assistant professor in Canadian cognitive psychology divisions with PhD programs between 2006 and 2016 (N = 64). Individuals who were hired from 2006 to 2011 averaged 10 journal-article...

How accomplished does one need to be in order to be competitive on the Canadian cognitive psychology job market? We looked at the publication record of everyone who was hired as an Assistant Professor in Canadian cognitive psychology divisions with PhD programs between 2006 and 2016 (N = 64). Individuals who were hired from 2006-2011 averaged 10 jo...

Faced with moral choice, people either judge according to pre-existing obligations (deontological judgment), or by taking into account the consequences of their actions (utilitarian judgment). We propose that the latter coheres with a more general cognitive mechanism - deontic introduction, the tendency to infer normative ('deontic') conclusions fr...

The dual strategy model of reasoning proposed by Verschueren, Schaeken, and d'Ydewalle (Thinking & Reasoning, 11(3), 239-278, 2005a; Memory & Cognition, 33(1), 107-119, 2005b) suggests that people can use either a statistical or a counterexample-based strategy to make deductive inferences. Subsequent studies have supported this distinction and inve...

Meta-Reasoning refers to the processes that monitor the progress of our reasoning and problem-solving activities and regulate the time and effort devoted to them. Monitoring processes are usually experienced as feelings of certainty or uncertainty about how well a process has, or will, unfold. These feelings are based on heuristic cues, which are n...

It is commonly assumed that belief-based reasoning is fast and automatic, whereas rule-based reasoning is slower and more effortful. Dual-Process theories of reasoning rely on this speed-asymmetry explanation to account for a number of reasoning phenomena, such as base-rate neglect and belief-bias. The goal of the current study was to test this hyp...

In this chapter, we argue that understanding the processes that underlie reasoning, problem solving, and decision-making 1 can be informed by understanding the metacognitive processes that monitor and control them. Our goal is to show that a metacognitive analysis applies to a wide range of reasoning tasks and theoretical perspectives, including Du...

Two experiments pitted the default-interventionist account of belief bias against a parallel-processing model. According to the former, belief bias occurs because a fast, belief-based evaluation of the conclusion pre-empts a working-memory demanding logical analysis. In contrast, according to the latter both belief-based and logic-based responding...

Examining the role of implicit, unconscious thinking on reasoning, decision making, problem solving, creativity, and its neurocognitive basis, for a genuinely psychological conception of rationality. This volume contributes to a current debate within the psychology of thought that has wide implications for our ideas about creativity, decision makin...

This volume contributes to a current debate within the psychology of thought that has wide implications for our ideas about creativity, decision making, and economic behavior. The essays focus on the role of implicit, unconscious thinking in creativity and problem solving, the interaction of intuition and analytic thinking, and the relationship bet...

There has been a paradigm shift in the psychology of deductive reasoning. Many researchers no longer think it is appropriate to ask people to assume premises and decide what necessarily follows, with the results evaluated by binary extensional logic. Most every day and scientific inference is made from more or less confidently held beliefs and not...

Prior research suggests that reducing font clarity can cause people to consider printed information more carefully. The most famous demonstration showed that participants were more likely to solve counterintuitive math problems when they were printed in hard-to-read font. However, after pooling data from that experiment with 16 attempts to replicat...

Humans have a unique ability to generate novel norms. Faced with the knowledge that there are hungry children in Somalia, we easily and naturally infer that we ought to donate to famine relief charities. Although a contentious and lively issue in metaethics, such inference from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ has not been systematically studied in the psychology o...

Intuitions are commonly defined in terms of their supposed characteristics, for example, fast, implicit, parallel, and automatic. In this chapter, I argue that such an approach fails to provide a sufficiently rigorous definition to be the basis for scientific inquiry. Instead, I propose that intuitive thought is best understood in terms of the mech...

The nature of people's meta-representations of deductive reasoning is critical to understanding how people control their own reasoning processes. We conducted two studies to examine whether people have a metacognitive representation of abstract validity and whether familiarity alone acts as a separate metacognitive cue. In Study 1, participants wer...

Purpose: Experienced clinicians derive many diagnoses intuitively, because most new problems they see closely resemble problems they've seen before. The majority of these diagnoses, but not all, will be correct. This study determined whether further reflection regarding initial diagnoses improves diagnostic accuracy during a high-stakes board exam...

One hundred and three participants solved conflict and non-conflict versions of four reasoning tasks using a two-response procedure: a base rate task, a causal reasoning task, a denominator neglect task, and a categorical syllogisms task. Participants were asked to give their first, intuitive answer, to make a Feeling of Rightness (FOR) judgment, a...

Human mental capacities and processes are the raw materials with which psychotherapists work. Thus what cognitive scientists have discovered in recent decades is potentially tremendous value for psychotherapeutic practice. But the new knowledge is not readily accessible to therapists, who find both language and methodology off-putting.

The authors regret that Dr. Melanie Pitchford’s name has been misspelt in the ‘‘Acknowledgements’’ of this article. The corrected acknowledgement should read: ‘‘We would like to thank Melanie Pitchford for her help programming Experiments 2a and 2b.’’

Base-rate neglect refers to the tendency for people to underweight base-rate probabilities in favor of diagnostic information. It is commonly held that base-rate neglect occurs because effortful (Type 2) reasoning is required to process base-rate information, whereas diagnostic information is accessible to fast, intuitive (Type 1) processing (e.g.,...

In this reply, we provide an analysis of Alter et al. (2013) response to our earlier paper (Thompson et al., 2013). In that paper, we reported difficulty in replicating Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley, and Eyre’s (2007) main finding, namely that a sense of disfluency produced by making stimuli difficult to perceive, increased accuracy on a variety of rea...

We tested the hypothesis that choices determined by Type 1 processes are compelling because they are fluent, and for this reason they are less subject to analytic thinking than other answers. A total of 104 participants completed a modified version of Wason's selection task wherein they made decisions about one card at a time using a two-response p...

Evans and Stanovich (2013, this issue) propose that Type 1 processes should be defined in terms of autonomy, such that they are initiated and run to completion in the presence of relevant triggering conditions. In this commentary, I argue that their autonomous execution has implications for the nature of the representation that is formed and for th...

In 2 experiments, we tested a strong version of a dual process theory of conditional inference (cf. Verschueren et al., 2005a, 2005b) that assumes that most reasoners have 2 strategies available, the choice of which is determined by situational variables, cognitive capacity, and metacognitive control. The statistical strategy evaluates inferences p...

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 a...

The purpose of these studies was to test the hypothesis that changing perspectives from one's own to another's promotes the engagement of analytic processing and, in turn, reduces the impact of beliefs. In two experiments participants evaluated research vignettes containing belief-consistent and belief-inconsistent conclusions, and indicated whethe...

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 respons...

MorePower 6.0 is a flexible freeware statistical calculator that computes sample size, effect size, and power statistics for factorial ANOVA designs. It also calculates relational confidence intervals for ANOVA effects based on formulas from Jarmasz and Hollands (Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 63:124-138, 2009), as well as Bayesian pos...

We tested models of base rate "neglect" using a novel paradigm. Participants (N = 62) judged the probability that a hypothetical person belonged to one of two categories (e.g., nurse/doctor) on the basis of either a personality description alone (NoBR) or the personality description and a base rate probability (BR). When base rates and descriptions...

Dual-Process Theories (DPT) have emerged as the dominant theoretical framework for human reasoning and decision making. These theories commonly assume that reasoning and decision making are accomplished by the joint action of two types of processes: Automatic System 1 (S1) processes give rise to a highly contextualized representation of the problem...

Using normative correctness as a diagnostic tool reduces the outcome of complex cognitive functions to a binary classification (normative or non-normative). It also focuses attention on outcomes, rather than processes, impeding the development of good cognitive theories. Given that both normative and non-normative responses may be produced by the s...

Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) is a widely studied phenomenon of human memory, but RIF of arithmetic facts remains relatively unexplored. In 2 experiments, we investigated RIF of simple addition facts (2 + 3 = 5) from practice of their multiplication counterparts (2 × 3 = 6). In both experiments, robust RIF expressed in response times occurred...

Dual Process Theories (DPT) of reasoning posit that judgments are mediated by both fast, automatic processes and more deliberate, analytic ones. A critical, but unanswered question concerns the issue of monitoring and control: When do reasoners rely on the first, intuitive output and when do they engage more effortful thinking? We hypothesised that...

Often when making decisions, one or more of the potential choices is suggested by automatic, fast acting heuristic processes. Advertisers, for example, rely on a sense of familiarity to increase the appeal of their products. Even complex judgments made by experts can be delivered by heuristic processes. These initial, intuitive judgments can, in th...

Prior research shows that reasoners' confidence is poorly calibrated (Shynkaruk & Thompson, 200635. Shynkaruk , J. M. and Thompson , V. A. 2006 . Confidence and accuracy in deductive reasoning . Memory and Cognition , 34 : 619 – 632 . [CrossRef], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®]View all references). The goal of the current experiment was to increase ca...

This chapter develops a framework for predicting S2 intervention that is based on metacognitive experiences associated with S1 processes. In particular, it develops the argument that the outcome of a given reasoning attempt is determined not only by the content of the information which is retrieved by S1 and analysed by S2, but also by a second-ord...

In three studies, we examined simple counterexample-based and probabilistic reasoning in children 6, 7, and 9 years of age. In the first study, participants were asked to make conditional (if-then) inferences under both categorical (certain or uncertain) and probabilistic instructions. Results showed that 6-year-olds respond to both forms of infere...

In formal reasoning, the quantifier "some" means "at least one and possibly all." In contrast, reasoners often pragmatically interpret "some" to mean "some, but not all" on both immediate-inference and Euler circle tasks. It is still unclear whether pragmatic interpretations can explain the high rates of errors normally observed on syllogistic reas...

Recent research (e.g., Evans & Over, 200442. Over , D. E. , Manktelow , K. I. and Hadjichristidis , C. 2004. Conditions for the acceptance of deontic conditionals. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58: 111–120. View all references) has provided support for the hypothesis that people evaluate the probability of conditional statements o...

In two experiments, we investigated the relationship between confidence and accuracy in syllogistic reasoning. Participants judged the validity of conclusions and provided confidence ratings twice for each problem: once quickly and again after further deliberation. Correlations between confidence and accuracy were small or nonexistent. In addition,...

Under the suppositional account of conditionals, when people think about a conditional assertion, "if p then q," they engage in a mental simulation in which they imagine p holds and evaluate the probability that q holds under this supposition. One implication of this account is that belief in a conditional equates to conditional probability [P(q/p)...

Three experiments investigated reasoners' beliefs about causal powers; that is, their beliefs about the capacity of a putative cause to produce a given effect. Covariation-based theories (e.g., Cheng, 1997; Kelley, 1973; Novick & Cheng, 2004) posit that beliefs in causal power are represented in terms of the degree of covariation between the cause...

Informal reasoning typically draws on a wider range of inferential behaviour than is measured by traditional inference tasks. In this paper, we developed several tasks to study informal reasoning with two novel types of conditional statements: Persuasions (e.g., if the Kyoto accord is ratified, greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced) and dissuasi...

This experiment examined the relative merits of using within-and between-subjects designs to investigate deductive reasoning. Two issues were investigated: 1) the potential for expectancy and fatigue effects when using within-subjects designs, and 2) the relative power of within- vs between-subjects designs. Participants were presented with problem...

In two experiments, we investigated how people interpret and reason with realistic conditionals in the form of inducements (i.e., promises and threats) and advice (i.e., tips and warnings). We found that inducements and advice differed with respect to the degree to which the speaker was perceived to have (a) control over the consequent, (b) a stake...

Preface that in part comments that the motivation for this issue came from a growing concern with the way in which the study of formal reasoning has been developing. Forty years ago, when the cognitive study of reasoning began in earnest, it was done under the assumption that the ability to make logically valid inferences was a cornerstone of ratio...

Preface that in part comments that the motivation for this issue came from a growing concern with the way in which the study of formal reasoning has been developing. Forty years ago, when the cognitive study of reasoning began in earnest, it was done under the assumption that the ability to make logically valid inferences was a cornerstone of ratio...

Presents an overview of this special issue and provides some implications for theory and conclusions. The great majority of the everyday reasoning, including that of expert groups engaged in their professions, is informal. By contrast, most of the studies of human inference reported by psychologists in the literature are of formal reasoning. This d...

In three experiments, we examined how reasoners' preexisting beliefs about causal relations constrained their evaluation of covariation-based empirical evidence. Reasoners were presented with causal candidates that were a priori rated to be either believable or unbelievable, as well as information regarding the degree to which the cause and the eff...

Models of deductive reasoning typically assume that reasoners dedicate more logical analysis to unbelievable conclusions than to believable ones (e.g., Evans, Newstead, Allen, & Pollard, 1994; Newstead, Pollard, Evans, & Allen, 1992). When the conclusion is believable, reasoners are assumed to accept it without much further thought, but when it is...

We report two new phenomena of deontic reasoning: (1) For conditionals with deontic content such as, "If the nurse cleaned up the blood then she must have worn rubber gloves", reasoners make more modus tollens inferences (from "she did not wear rubber gloves" to "she did not clean up the blood") compared to conditionals with epistemic content. (2)...

The authors investigated the relationship between reasoners' understanding of subjunctive conditionals (e.g., if p had happened, then q would have happened) and the inferences they were prepared to endorse. Reasoners who made a counterfactual interpretation of subjunctive statements (i.e., they judged the statement to imply that p and q did not hap...

The authors investigated the relationship between reasoners' understanding of subjunctive conditionals (e.g., if p had happened, then q would have happened) and the inferences they were prepared to endorse. Reasoners who made a counterfactual interpretation of subjunctive statements (i.e., they judged the statement to imply that p and q did not hap...

Much research has demonstrated that people's causal judgments are sensitive the the degree to which they cause and effect co-vary, as well as pre-exisiting beliefs regarding the nature of the cause and effect in question. Models of causal reasoning, however, have typically addressed each source of information in isolation. We propose a model for ho...

Although numerous computer programs for statistical power analysis are available, power is an under-used aspect of experimental analysis, perhaps because of the perceived difficulty of performing the necessary calculations or because existing computer software can be expensive or complicated to learn. For single-degree-of-freedom tests, however, it...

According to mental models theory, a key aspect of deductive reasoning is the production of alternative models that can falsify provisional conclusions. In the present paper, the possibility is investigated that there are individual differences in the ability to produce alternative models. The results indicate that some people do not proceed beyond...

Causal discounting occurs when the perceived efficacy of a putative cause is reduced by the presence of a stronger causal candidate. Previous studies of causal discounting have defined the strength of causal candidates in terms of the degree to which the cause and the effect covary (e.g., Baker, Mercier, Vallee-Tourangeau, Frank, & Pan, 1993). In c...

Reviews the book, Who is rational: Studies of individual differences in reasoning by Keith E. Stanovich (see record 1999-02413-000). Why do seemingly intelligent and otherwise rational people perform so poorly on a variety of laboratory reasoning tasks? Stanovich summarizes the findings of an extensive research program whose goal is to describe s...

Three experiments examined people's ability to incorporate base rate information when judging posterior probabilities. Specifically, we tested the (Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1996). Are humans good intuitive statisticians after all? Rethinking some conclusions from the literature on judgement under uncertainty. Cognition, 58, 1–73) conclusion that...

This paper develops a theory of how interpretative processes constrain inferential performance on conditional reasoning tasks. Experiment 1 investigated the hypothesis that performance on common reasoning tasks is mediated by different interpretive variables. Necessity and sufficiency relations predicted performance on the conditional arguments tas...

The present study investigated how people combine covariation information (Cheng & Novick, 1990, 1992) with pre-existing beliefs (White, 1989) when evaluating causal hypotheses. Three experiments, using both within- and between-subjects designs, found that the use of covariation information and beliefs interacted, such that the effects of covariati...

This study investigated individual differences in the belief bias effect, which is the tendency to accept conclusions because they are believable rather than because they are logically valid. It was observed that the extent of an individual's belief bias effect was unrelated to a number of measures of reasoning competence. Instead, as predicted by...

In our daily thinking we often make inferences that are based not only on the facts of a situation but also on conjectures about how the situation could have been different.

A believable conclusion is usually judged more acceptable than an unbelievable one, all other things being equal. However, there has been little empirical work to address how the believability of the premises affects the acceptability of an argument. In the present study, 108 Ss solved problems having either believable, unbelievable, or neutral pr...

This book (see record 1991-98882-000 ) is unusual in that its purpose is not to present either an empirical or logical case for dual-coding theory; thorough arguments of this type are made in several other published sources (e.g., Paivio, 1986; Paivio, 1991). Instead, it follows the 30-year history of dual coding theory from its inception in the mi...

The purpose of this article was to investigate why sentences of the form "p only if q" often appear to have a different meaning than sentences of the form "if p, then q," despite their logical equivalence. The results of 3 experiments indicate that when "if ... then" statements were equated with respect to necessity and temporal relations, differen...

The purpose of this article was to investigate why sentences of the form “p only if q ” often appear to have a different meaning than sentences of the form “if p, then q ,” despite their logical equivalence. The results of 3 experiments indicate that when “if . . . then” statements were equated with respect to necessity and temporal relations, diff...

Le but de cette recherche était d’étudier deux théories du raisonnement conditionnel. La théorie du schéma pragmatique de Cheng et Holyoak (1985) propose que le rendement du raisonnement conditionnel est conditionné par des règles d’inférence propres au contexte et prédit que les formes d’inférence varieront en fonction du schéma de raisonnement in...

Two experiments examined the role of necessity and sufficiency relationships in conditional reasoning. The results indicated that perceived necessity and sufficiency predicted variability in reasoning performance for four pragmatic relations (permission, obligation, causation, and definition), for both determinant and indeterminant syntactic forms,...