Proposes a probability heuristic model for syllogistic reasoning and confirms the rationality of this heuristic by an analysis of the probabilistic validity of syllogistic reasoning that treats logical inference as a limiting case of probabilistic inference. Meta-analysis and two experiments involving 40 adult participants and using generalized…

Seven studies involving 256 undergraduates examined how people represent, access, and make inferences about the real-world category domain, foods. Results give a detailed picture of the use of cross-classification in a complex domain. (SLD)

Responds to Biskin's comments (this issue) on the significance test controversy. Highlights areas of agreement (importance of replication evidence, importance of effect sizes) and disagreement (influence of sample size, evaluation of populations vs. samples, significance of Carver's article). Includes further recommendations for reporting research…

Three experiments examine how preschoolers partition their basic level categories to form subordinate level categories and whether these have inductive potential. Results suggest that contrastive information promotes the emergence of subordinate categories as a basis of inductive inference and newly established subordinate categories can retain…

Analyzed 150 articles from the "Journal of Applied Psychology" (JAP) from 1940 to 1999 to determine statistical reporting practices related to null hypothesis significance testing, American Psychological Association guidelines, and reform recommendations. Findings show little evidence that decades of cogent criticisms by reformers have…

States that although the think-aloud method (TAM) is being used with increasing frequency in studying text comprehension, some skepticism of its value remains. Discusses assumptions behind TAM, aspects of comprehension it can reveal, and directions for research using TAM. Argues that TAM is a useful technique for tracking changes in the contents…

Investigated whether infants infer that a hidden, freely moving object will move continuously and smoothly. Six- to 10- month olds inferred that the object's path would be connected and unobstructed, in accord with continuity. Younger infants did not infer this, in accord with inertia. At 8 and 10 months, knowledge of inertia emerged but remained…

Infants heard sentences in which prosodic structure was either consistent or inconsistent with the syntactic structure. Results suggest that the prosodic information in an individual sentence is not always sufficient to assign a syntactic structure and that learners must engage in active inferential processes to arrive at the correct syntactic…

Cognitive neuroscience is a scientific discipline that aims to determine how brain function gives rise to mental activity. Modern imaging techniques have contributed significantly to the emergence of this discipline. A conceptual framework is presented to help interpret data describing the relationships between cognitive phenomena and brain…

Examined influence of object labels and shape similarity on 16- to 21-month-olds' inferences. Found that infants generalized non-obvious property of unlabeled objects to test objects with highly similar shapes. For objects labeled with novel nouns, infants relied on shape similarity and shared labels to generalize properties. For objects labeled…

Investigates the direction of young children's reading comprehension skill in association with their ability to draw inferences and explores possible sources of inferential failure. Finds that the ability to make inferences was not a by-product of good reading comprehension, rather that good inference skills are a plausible cause of good reading…

Features astronomy activities that teach the value and limitations of inferring. (YDS)

Think-alouds during reading allow teachers to model their thinking by voicing all the things they are noticing, doing, seeing, feeling, and asking as they process the text. Inferencing is essential for students to comprehend a wide variety of texts successfully. This article describes how teachers can use think-alouds to lend their language and…

Klin et al., 2004 and Levine et al., 2000 concluded that readers fail to resolve noun phrase anaphors when the antecedent is difficult to retrieve from memory and the inference is not necessary for comprehension. In four experiments we investigated the hypothesis that these inferences were actually partially encoded. Although the results of a…

Children between the ages of 3 and 10 years were presented with a set of pictures representing a contract with bilateral cheating options between a parent and child (Study 1) and between 2 peers (Study 2). The children had to (a) evaluate which situations violated the contract when the relevant information was presented, (b) anticipate the…