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Human reasoners often tend to use simple and rapid strategies, heuristics, to make inferences. These are adaptative mechanisms of a non-logical nature. In some occasions they are very useful but in other cases they lead subjects to commit systematic cognitive biases. The purpose of this work has been to identify some of the main theoretical proposals on heuristics and cognitive biases in reasoning highlighting the framework of the Dual Process Theories. According to such theoretical perspectives, there are two types of thinking processes. Type 1 that is intuitive, automatic, unconscious, implicit and fast and Type 2 that is reflective, controlled, conscious, explicit and slow. This work ends with some brief considerations about the relationship between heuristics and cognitive biases and the study of individual differences in reasoning

Psiholozi su počeli da se eksperimentalno bave deduktivnim zaključivanjem početkom 20. veka. Ipak, zbog načina na koji su eksperimenti bili osmišljeni, nije bilo značajnih pomaka u toj oblasti sve do relativno skoro. Smatramo da postoje dva glavna razloga zbog kojih dedukcija često nije bila ispitivana na adekvatan način. Prvi je taj što su psiholozi u velikoj meri ignorisali razvoj matematičke logike i bazirali svoja istraživanja na silogizmima. Drugi razlog je uticaj gledišta, koje i dalje preovladava u semantici i logici uopšte, da su kategorički pojmovi, kao što je pojam istine, važniji od hipotetičkih pojmova, kao što je pojam dedukcije. Uticaj te dogme na psihološka istraživanja je bio dvostruk. U studijama koje su se bavile shvatanjem logičkih veznika kod odraslih i kod dece, mnogo više značaja je pridavano semantičkim aspektima veznika - istinosnim funkcijama, dok su dedukcije stavljane u drugi plan. Sa druge strane, dogma je uticala čak i na istraživanja koja su pomoću formalnih sistema ispitivala deduktivno zaključivanje na taj način što je uslovljavala izbor sistema. Istraživači su uglavnom preferirali aksiomatske formalne sisteme naspram sistema prirodne dedukcije, iako su se za izučavanje dedukcije potonji pokazali kao daleko adekvatniji., Psychologists have experimentally studied deductive reasoning since the beginning of the 20 th century. However, as we will argue, there has not been much improvement in the field until relatively recently, due to how the experiments were designed. We deem the design of the majority of conducted experiments inadequate for two reasons. The first one is that psychologists have, for the most part, ignored the development of mathematical logic and based their research on syllogistic inferences. The second reason is the influence of the view, which is dogmatically still prevalent in semantics and logic in general, that the categorical notions, such as the notion of truth, are more important than the hypothetical notions, such as the notion of deduction. The influence of this dogma has been twofold. In studies concerning logical connectives in adults and children, much more emphasis has been put on the semanti-cal aspects of the connectives-the truth functions, than on the deductive inferences. And secondly, even in the studies that investigated deductive inferences by using formal systems, the dogma still influenced the choice of the formal system. Researchers , in general, preferred the axiomatic formal systems over the systems of natural deduction, even though the systems of the second kind are much more suitable for studying deduction.

Myside bias has been characterized as the tendency for people to produce and evaluate arguments in a manner biased towards their ideology. The main objective of this paper is to analyze myside bias in an argument evaluation task. We constructed a test composed of two parts: a Likert-style questionnaire about personal attitudes and an argument evaluation task. Two controversial topics were employed for constructing this reasoning test namely, legalizing abortion and lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility. Participants (N=247) were recruited from a secondary school and two universities in Córdoba, Argentina. We found a significant correlation between opinions regarding legalizing abortion and the assessment of arguments about abortion. However, we found a weak correlation between the Likert-score obtained regarding the age of criminal responsibility and the argument evaluation task towards that topic. Besides, we analyze the relation among myside bias and two variables of interest: educational level and formal instruction in logic. Regarding educational level, we haven’t found a significant difference between the results obtained by secondary students participants and by university students participants. Regarding formal instruction in logic, we found that myside bias diminishes among participants with more training in logic., El sesgo a mi favor puede caracterizarse como la tendencia a producir y evaluar argumentos de manera influenciada por la propia ideología. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar el sesgo a mi favor en una tarea de evaluación de argumentos. Para esto, construimos una prueba compuesta por dos partes: una encuesta de opinión personal basada en una escala Likert y una tarea de evaluación de argumentos. La prueba fue construida a partir de dos temas de actualidad de gran controversia en nuestro país, a saber, la legalización del aborto y la edad de imputabilidad. Esta prueba fue administrada a un total de 247 participantes seleccionados en un colegio secundario y en dos universidades de la ciudad de Córdoba. Los resultados muestran que existe una correlación significativa entre la opinión de los participantes con respecto a la legalización del aborto y la evaluación que realizan de los argumentos referidos a este tema. Sin embargo, encontramos que no existe una correlación significativa entre las opiniones y la evaluación de argumentos sobre la edad de imputabilidad. Asimismo, analizamos la relación del sesgo a mi favor con dos variables de interés: el nivel educativo y la instrucción específica en lógica. Con respecto al nivel educativo, no encontramos grandes diferencias entre los resultados obtenidos en la muestra de estudiantes de nivel secundario y en la muestra de estudiantes de nivel universitario. Con respecto a la instrucción específica, observamos que el sesgo disminuye entre los participantes con mayor formación en lógica.

Psiholozi su počeli da se eksperimentalno bave deduktivnim zaključivanjem početkom 20. veka. Ipak, zbog načina na koji su eksperimenti bili osmišljeni, nije bilo značajnih pomaka u toj oblasti sve do relativno skoro. Smatramo da postoje dva glavna razloga zbog kojih dedukcija često nije bila ispitivana na adekvatan način. Prvi je taj što su psiholozi u velikoj meri ignorisali razvoj matematičke logike i bazirali svoja istraživanja na silogizmima. Drugi razlog je uticaj gledišta, koje i dalje preovladava u semantici i logici uopšte, da su kategorički pojmovi, kao što je pojam istine, važniji od hipotetičkih pojmova, kao što je pojam dedukcije. Uticaj te dogme na psihološka istraživanja je bio dvostruk. U studijama koje su se bavile shvatanjem logičkih veznika kod odraslih i kod dece, mnogo više značaja je pridavano semantičkim aspektima veznika - istinosnim funkcijama, dok su dedukcije stavljane u drugi plan. Sa druge strane, dogma je uticala čak i na istraživanja koja su pomoću formalnih sistema ispitivala deduktivno zaključivanje na taj način što je uslovljavala izbor sistema. Istraživači su uglavnom preferirali aksiomatske formalne sisteme naspram sistema prirodne dedukcije, iako su se za izučavanje dedukcije potonji pokazali kao daleko adekvatniji., Psychologists have experimentally studied deductive reasoning since the beginning of the 20 th century. However, as we will argue, there has not been much improvement in the field until relatively recently, due to how the experiments were designed. We deem the design of the majority of conducted experiments inadequate for two reasons. The first one is that psychologists have, for the most part, ignored the development of mathematical logic and based their research on syllogistic inferences. The second reason is the influence of the view, which is dogmatically still prevalent in semantics and logic in general, that the categorical notions, such as the notion of truth, are more important than the hypothetical notions, such as the notion of deduction. The influence of this dogma has been twofold. In studies concerning logical connectives in adults and children, much more emphasis has been put on the semanti-cal aspects of the connectives-the truth functions, than on the deductive inferences. And secondly, even in the studies that investigated deductive inferences by using formal systems, the dogma still influenced the choice of the formal system. Researchers , in general, preferred the axiomatic formal systems over the systems of natural deduction, even though the systems of the second kind are much more suitable for studying deduction.

In the last decades, with the emergence of artificial intelligence, a large number of logics called conditional logics have been introduced to model our conditional reasoning captured by so--called conditionals, which are statements of the form `if A then B'. More recently, conditional reasoning has also come under scrutiny by psychologists, yet with more pragmatic and empirical considerations. The main objective of this seminar was to provide an opportunity for these different communities working on that topic to meet and reinforce their ties. We focused on three specific issues. First, we investigated how people's intuitions about `counterpossibles' can be understood empirically and classified with respect to the theoretical accounts of conditional logics. Second, we reconsidered the various semantics of system P and we wondered to which extent pragmatics plays a role in the relevance relation between the antecedant and the consequent of a conditional. Third, we strove to apply the recent advances in proof theory and correspondence theory to conditional logics. These working groups were preceded by short talks and tutorials.

This experiment explores the effect of the scenario’s availability, instruction (true/false vs. violation) and presentation order on performance in different versions of Wason’s selection task. Each subject was given three problems corresponding to the content of the three different rules (abstract content, thematic-permission and thematic-norm). The main analyses are presented in terms of matching and logical index (Pollard and Evans, 1987). The matching and logical index were influenced by the contents of the rules. Also there exist an interaction between instructions and content in the logical index. In the abstract version, as in the thematic-obligation, the logical indices are superior on the individuals that receive violation instructions, whilst that in the thematic-permission the best performance was registered with true/false instructions. The results are not consistent with syntactic theories of human reasoning, and are discussed in terms of pragmatic and semantic theories of human reasoning.

This experiment explores the influence of thematic content, the presence or absence of a scenario and the use of deontic or indicative framing of conditional rules on performance on Wason’s selection task. Logical performance was affected by the content used (permission rules were the best, neutral the worst and obligation rules intermediate) and by the use of scenarios. The scenario effect interacted significantly with the problem framing such that the presence of a scenario facilitate performance only when problems were framed in a deontic rather than indicative manner. The presence of scenarios did not interact with the problem content. These results are discussed in terms of pragmatic influences on reasoning, within the framework of the Dual Process Theory (Evans & Over, 1996)

La pregunta por la logicidad busca los criterios que hacen que cierto objeto se pueda considerar un objeto lógico. Los diferentes criterios de logicidad posibles marcarán no solo las distintas formas de concebir la lógica como disciplina académica, sino también distintos modos de entender, en el lenguaje ordinario o en otras disciplinas, qué quiere decir que algo es o no lógico. Mostramos que las aportaciones de las lógicas no clásicas y la pragmática, así como del estudio de otras formas de inferencia distintas de la deducción, enriquecen la caracterización intuitiva de la lógica, lo cual resulta de un interés especial cuando se trata de aplicar la lógica al entrenamiento y evaluación del razonamiento humano., The question of logicality searches for criteria that make that a given object can be considered a logical object. Different criteria of logicality establish not only the different possible ways of conceiving logic as an academic discipline, but also the different ways of understanding, in natural language or in other disciplines, what means that something is logical or not. We show that the contribution of non-classical logics and pragmatics, and the study of other kinds of inference different to deduction, enrich the intuitive characterization of logic, which is of particular interest when trying to apply the logic for training and evaluating human reasoning.

La pregunta por la logicidad busca los criterios que hacen que cierto objeto se pueda considerar un objeto lógico. Los diferentes criterios de logicidad posibles marcarán no solo las distintas formas de concebir la lógica como disciplina académica, sino también distintos modos de entender, en el lenguaje ordinario o en otras disciplinas, qué quiere decir que algo es o no lógico. Mostramos que las aportaciones de las lógicas no clásicas y la pragmática, así como del estudio de otras formas de inferencia distintas de la deducción, enriquecen la caracterización intuitiva de la lógica, lo cual resulta de un interés especial cuando se trata de aplicar la lógica al entrenamiento y evaluación del razonamiento humano., The question of logicality searches for criteria that make that a given object can be considered a logical object. Different criteria of logicality establish not only the different possible ways of conceiving logic as an academic discipline, but also the different ways of understanding, in natural language or in other disciplines, what means that something is logical or not. We show that the contribution of non-classical logics and pragmatics, and the study of other kinds of inference different to deduction, enrich the intuitive characterization of logic, which is of particular interest when trying to apply the logic for training and evaluating human reasoning.

La pregunta por la logicidad busca los criterios que hacen que cierto objeto se pueda considerar un objeto lógico. Los diferentes criterios de logicidad posibles marcarán no solo las distintas formas de concebir la lógica como disciplina académica, sino también distintos modos de entender, en el lenguaje ordinario o en otras disciplinas, qué quiere decir que algo es o no lógico. Mostramos que las aportaciones de las lógicas no clásicas y la pragmática, así como del estudio de otras formas de inferencia distintas de la deducción, enriquecen la caracterización intuitiva de la lógica, lo cual resulta de un interés especial cuando se trata de aplicar la lógica al entrenamiento y evaluación del razonamiento humano., The question of logicality searches for criteria that make that a given object can be considered a logical object. Different criteria of logicality establish not only the different possible ways of conceiving logic as an academic discipline, but also the different ways of understanding, in natural language or in other disciplines, what means that something is logical or not. We show that the contribution of non-classical logics and pragmatics, and the study of other kinds of inference different to deduction, enrich the intuitive characterization of logic, which is of particular interest when trying to apply the logic for training and evaluating human reasoning.

La pregunta por la logicidad busca los criterios que hacen que cierto objeto se pueda considerar un objeto lógico. Los diferentes criterios de logicidad posibles marcarán no solo las distintas formas de concebir la lógica como disciplina académica, sino también distintos modos de entender, en el lenguaje ordinario o en otras disciplinas, qué quiere decir que algo es o no lógico. Mostramos que las aportaciones de las lógicas no clásicas y la pragmática, así como del estudio de otras formas de inferencia distintas de la deducción, enriquecen la caracterización intuitiva de la lógica, lo cual resulta de un interés especial cuando se trata de aplicar la lógica al entrenamiento y evaluación del razonamiento humano., The question of logicality searches for criteria that make that a given object can be considered a logical object. Different criteria of logicality establish not only the different possible ways of conceiving logic as an academic discipline, but also the different ways of understanding, in natural language or in other disciplines, what means that something is logical or not. We show that the contribution of non-classical logics and pragmatics, and the study of other kinds of inference different to deduction, enrich the intuitive characterization of logic, which is of particular interest when trying to apply the logic for training and evaluating human reasoning.

La pregunta por la logicidad busca los criterios que hacen que cierto objeto se pueda considerar un objeto lógico. Los diferentes criterios de logicidad posibles marcarán no solo las distintas formas de concebir la lógica como disciplina académica, sino también distintos modos de entender, en el lenguaje ordinario o en otras disciplinas, qué quiere decir que algo es o no lógico. Mostramos que las aportaciones de las lógicas no clásicas y la pragmática, así como del estudio de otras formas de inferencia distintas de la deducción, enriquecen la caracterización intuitiva de la lógica, lo cual resulta de un interés especial cuando se trata de aplicar la lógica al entrenamiento y evaluación del razonamiento humano., The question of logicality searches for criteria that make that a given object can be considered a logical object. Different criteria of logicality establish not only the different possible ways of conceiving logic as an academic discipline, but also the different ways of understanding, in natural language or in other disciplines, what means that something is logical or not. We show that the contribution of non-classical logics and pragmatics, and the study of other kinds of inference different to deduction, enrich the intuitive characterization of logic, which is of particular interest when trying to apply the logic for training and evaluating human reasoning.

The aim of this work is to analyze some aspects that can have an influence on our evaluation of conditional statements. The final purpose is to provide a methodological frame of evaluation of this kind of statements without taking into account the truth values of antecedent and consequent as Formal Logic has been usually assumed., En el presente trabajo se analizan algunos factores o aspectos que pueden influir en la evaluación de los enunciados condicionales. El objetivo final es proporcionar un marco metodológico de evaluación de este tipo de enunciados como verdaderos o falsos sin tener en cuenta exclusivamente los valores de verdad del antecedente y del consecuente tal y como tradicionalmente ha propuesto la Lógica Formal.

The aim of this work is to analyze some aspects that can have an influence on our evaluation of conditional statements. The final purpose is to provide a methodological frame of evaluation of this kind of statements without taking into account the truth values of antecedent and consequent as Formal Logic has been usually assumed., En el presente trabajo se analizan algunos factores o aspectos que pueden influir en la evaluación de los enunciados condicionales. El objetivo final es proporcionar un marco metodológico de evaluación de este tipo de enunciados como verdaderos o falsos sin tener en cuenta exclusivamente los valores de verdad del antecedente y del consecuente tal y como tradicionalmente ha propuesto la Lógica Formal.

This study forms part of a wider research project aimed at investigating relationships between cognitive skills and performance on experimental reasoning tasks (Stanovich, 1999; Stanovich & West, 1998). The study aims to replicate and expand our previous studies of individual differences, both in conditional reasoning (Seoane, Valiña, Ferraces & Martín, 1997; Valiña, Seoane, Ferraces & Martín, 1993; 1995; 2000) and disjunctive reasoning (Martín, Seoane, Valiña & Ferraces, 1998; Martín & Valiña, 2002; 2003). Specifically, this study centred on individual differences in a reasoning task: The THOG problem (Wason, 1977; Wason & Brooks, 1979). This is one of the tasks conceived by Peter Wason to “explore the nature of thought” (Evans & Johnson-Laird, 2003, p. 178). Concretely, the aims of this study were: (1) To investigate the relationships between the subjects´ performance on various computerized tests of cognitive abilities and the subjects´ reasoning with the THOG problem, and (2) to analyze the influence of rule content (formal and different thematic versions of the task) and instructions (standard / oneother) on the subjects´ performance with the THOG problem

In this study the role of pragmatic knowledge in conditional reasoning was investigated (Cheng & Holyoak, 1985; Holyoak & Cheng, 1995). We tried to precisely determine the importance of the variable which we refer to as “the probability of empirical frequency" (Valiña & cols. 1992a, b; Valiña & cols. 1996a, b) This refers to the frequency with which the expressed relation between the antecedent and the consequent in conditional sentences occurs in the real world. If, as is proposed by the Theory of Mental Models (Johnson-Laird, 1983; Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 1991), people elaborate representations of the real world, it would be expected that reasoning with conditional sentences in which "empirical possibilities" are expressed will be different from the reasoning involved with statements which imply "empirical neccessities" (Byrne & Johnson-Laird, 1992). The results are not consistent with theories based on formal rules of inference.

The main objective of this experiment is to determine in what way the subjects´s knowledge of the real world modulates their performance in a conditional reasoning task with narrative contexts, in line with previous experimental studies (Cheng & Holyoak, 1985 and Holyoak & Cheng, 1995) The empirical frequency (Valiña, Seoane, Gehring, Ferraces & Fernández-Rey, 1992; Valiña, Seoane, Martín, Fernández-Rey & Ferraces, 1992; Valiña, Seoane, Ferraces & Martín, 1996a, b) was manipulated. This refers to the frequency with which empirical relation expressed between the antecedent and the consequent of the premises on conditional arguments occurs in the real world. This relation could occur always (deterministic), sometimes (probabilistic) or there could be no specific relation between antecedent and consequent (without specific relation). In this respect, we consider the deterministic relation similar to a relation of empirical necessity (the relation expressed in the conditional statement always happens); while the probabilistic relation presents a character of empirical possibility (which only happens sometimes in the real world)