We investigate the articulation between domain-general reasoning and interpretive processes in failures of deductive reasoning. We focus on illusory inferences from disjunction-like elements, a broad class of deductive fallacies studied in some detail over the past 15 years. These fallacies have received accounts grounded in reasoning processes,…

Capacities for abstract thinking and problem-solving are central to human cognition. Processes of abstraction allow the transfer of experiences and knowledge between contexts helping us make informed decisions in new or changing contexts. While we are often inclined to relate such reasoning capacities to individual minds and brains, they may in…

In the property listing task (PLT), participants are asked to list properties for a concept (e.g., for the concept "dog," "barks," and "is a pet" may be produced). In conceptual property norming (CPNs) studies, participants are asked to list properties for large sets of concepts. Here, we use a mathematical model of…

The ability to reason about how things were made is a pervasive aspect of how humans make sense of physical objects. Such reasoning is useful for a range of everyday tasks, from assembling a piece of furniture to making a sandwich and knitting a sweater. What enables people to reason in this way even about novel objects, and how do people draw…

Task-relevant actions can facilitate mathematical thinking, even for complex topics, such as mathematical proof. We investigated whether such cognitive benefits also occur for action predictions. The action-cognition transduction (ACT) model posits a reciprocal relationship between movements and reasoning. Movements--imagined as well as real ones…

When young children learn to use language, they start to use their hands in co-verbal gesturing. There are, however, considerable differences between children, and it is not completely understood what these individual differences are due to. We studied how children at 4 years of age employ speech and iconic gestures to convey meaning in different…

Analogical reasoning is a core facet of higher cognition in humans. Creating analogies as we navigate the environment helps us learn. Analogies involve reframing novel encounters using knowledge of familiar, relationally similar contexts stored in memory. When an analogy links a novel encounter with a familiar context, it can aid in problem…

The ability to reason and problem-solve in novel situations, as measured by the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM), is highly predictive of both cognitive task performance and real-world outcomes. Here we provide evidence that RAPM performance depends on the ability to reallocate attention in response to self-generated feedback about…