Neural Mechanisms for Dual-Process Reasoning: Evidence from the Belief-Bias Effect

Recent neuroimaging studies have increasingly focused on the neural mechanisms of human deductive reasoning (see Goel, 2006 for recent review). Deductive reasoning is the cognitive process of drawing valid conclusions from a given set of premises. Although it should be performed independently of prior knowledge and intuitive beliefs, actual human reasoning often relies on them. Sometimes such beliefs provide valid solutions to problems, though they can also bias our judgment. This tendency toward bias in human reasoning has been experimentally studied through the demonstration of belief-bias effect in syllogistic reasoning (De Neys, 2006a, 2006b; Tsujii et al., 2006).