Reasoning and Meta-Reasoning

凭直觉还是深思熟虑？分析思想的价值在大众和学术报刊上都受到了激烈的争论。一些作者指出了直觉的准确性，而最近的研究结果表明，分析思维的倾向（通过本提案中使用的推理任务来衡量）可能会在实验室之外对假新闻、雄辩但可疑的主张、对超自然现象的信仰等方面产生深远的影响。拟议的研究旨在通过更好地理解我们的思维过程是如何被监控的，以及这种监控是如何塑造随后的分析参与的，来重塑我们对分析思维何时以及如何被参与的理解。第一组研究详细研究了认知能力在推理中的作用，分心推理的后果，以及推理策略如何影响推理结果。第二部分研究的是，在其他条件相同的情况下，为什么分析推理没有在适当的情况下进行。这个建议是，许多这样的例子都是由元认知监控失败引起的：我们所依赖的告诉我们我们的思维过程运行良好的线索可能会误导我们。这些线索产生了一种确定或不确定的感觉，即过程已经、正在或将如何展开。例如，直觉常常伴随着强烈的正确感，这是我们不需要进一步思考的信号。这种感觉是建立在线索的基础上的，比如想到事情的容易程度，这可能与准确性没有很好的关联。因此，强烈的正义感可能会导致我们认为一切都很好，但事实并非如此。本研究探讨了在各种推理情境中决定这种正确感强度的因素，以及这种正确感与更审慎分析的概率和程度之间的关系。我还建议研究其他类型的监控过程，比如错误感觉（我们能告诉我们什么时候犯了错误吗？），错误感觉（感觉有些事情出错了），以及可解决性判断（我有能力解决这个问题吗？）这项工作与一个充斥着“假新闻”和信息过载的世界的相关性是显而易见的。此外，各个层次的学生都将获得进行基础研究所需的技术技能，以及在竞争激烈的现代世界中所有职业所必需的团队合作、沟通和解决问题的技能。

Rely on instinct or think it through? The value of analytic thought has been hotly debated in both the popular and academic press. Some authors point to the accuracy of intuitions, while recent findings suggest that a tendency towards analytic thinking, as measured by the reasoning tasks used in this proposal, may have profound consequence outside of the laboratory in terms of susceptibility to fake news, eloquent but dubious claims, belief in the paranormal, etc. The proposed research aims to reshape our understanding of when and how analytic thinking is engaged by better understanding how our thought processes are monitored and how this monitoring shapes subsequent analytic engagement. The first set of studies takes a detailed look at the role of cognitive capacity in reasoning, the consequences of reasoning while distracted, and how reasoning strategies shape reasoning outcomes. The second investigates why, all other things being equal, analytic reasoning is not engaged in situations where it would be appropriate. The proposal is that many such instances arise from a metacognitive monitoring failure: the cues that we rely on to tell us that our thought processes are working well can be misleading. These cues give rise to a sense of certainty or uncertainty about how well a process has, is, or will, unfold. For example, intuitions are often accompanied by a strong feeling of rightness, which is our signal that further thought is not needed. Such feelings are based on cues, such as the ease with which things come to mind, that may not be well correlated with accuracy. Thus, a strong feeling of rightness may lead us to think all is well when it is not. The proposed research investigates the factors that determine the strength of this feeling of rightness in a variety of reasoning situations, as well as the relationship between this feeling of rightness and the probability and degree of more deliberate analysis. I have also proposed to examine other types of monitoring processes, such as the feeling of error (can we tell when we have made a mistake?), the feeling of wrongness (a sense that something is amiss), and judgments of solvability (am I capable of solving this problem?). The relevance of this work to a world where “fake news” and information overload abound is clear. In addition, students at all levels will gain experience with both the technical skills needed to carry out basic research, but also the team-work, communication, and problem-solving skills necessary to all professions in our competitive, modern world.