The Role of Strategies and Instructions in Relational Deductive Reasoning

Deductive reasoning is often seen as being composed of an immutable mechanism, universal to all reasoning situations and consisting of either mental models (e.g., Johnson-Laird, 1983) or formal-rules (e.g., Rips, 1994). Many researchers have questioned whether these positions are truly mutually exclusive (e.g., Roberts, 1993, 2000). Most deductive reasoning research has largely ignored the influence of instructions and strategies on the reasoning process. The present experiment was conducted to investigate reasoning strategies along with metacognitive measures of those strategies. Instructions were given to use a particular strategy (e.g., spatial, verbal). Items were separated into two levels: simple and complex, based on the amount of premises. Premise times, accuracy, and strategy reports were collected. Instructions had an effect on performance, as seen in premise times and accuracy. Also, strategy reports indicated a distribution of strategies utilized by participants. Strategy reports proved vital in corroborating differential patterns of performance indicative of varied approaches to solving this task.