Basic mechanisms underlying reasoning and decision making

思考和推理的能力是人类思维最非凡的成就之一，可以说是将人类思维与其他动物的思维区分开来的关键认知能力之一。然而，人类的头脑并不完美，并不总是做出最优的决定。几十年的研究已经证明，人类的思维和推理在许多方面都是容易出错的，导致在许多领域的偏颇表现。例如，人们经常让他们的个人信念来指导他们的思维，而使用逻辑会更好。此外，人们往往对自己的判断和决定过于自信，即使他们的推理能力容易出错。也许令人惊讶的是，我们仍然对促进有效思维的认知机制知之甚少。我在目前的拨款申请中提出的研究将通过系统地研究支持有效推理的基本认知机制，特别是关注元认知过程(例如，主观自信)如何影响我们在推理和决策任务中分配注意力的方式，在理解这一点方面取得重要进展。此外，通过包括指示认知能力和思维风格的个体差异衡量标准，我的实验室将确定元认知和注意力的耦合作为已知的显著影响推理能力的关键个体差异的函数而变化的程度。这些都是重要的研究问题，因为了解元认知在引导人们注意推理任务中相关信息方面的作用不仅有助于我们理解成功推理表现背后的基本认知机制，而且最终还将有助于塑造旨在减少偏见和促进有效推理的操纵，这是本研究的次要目标。具体地说，一旦更好地理解了推理表现背后的元认知和注意机制，我的实验室将对针对这些机制的实验操作进行经验性检查，以检查对推理任务相关维度的注意力和整体推理表现的促进程度。在学术层面上，来自拟议研究的结果将使我的实验室能够开发一个更全面的模型，说明当进行推理和决策时，较高水平的认知过程(例如，元认知)与较低水平的认知过程(例如，注意力)是如何相互作用的。在实践层面上，通过对促进有效推理和决策的基本认知机制获得新的见解，并确定如何促进这些机制，我的实验室将能够采取重要步骤，制定可用于减少偏见的策略，并在具有现实世界后果的领域(例如，个人健康、金融)促进推理和决策。

The ability to think and reason is one of the most remarkable feats of the human mind, and is arguably one of the key cognitive faculties that separates the human mind from that of other animals. However, the human mind is not perfect, and does not always make optimal decisions. Decades of research has documented a multitude of ways in which human thinking and reasoning is fallible, resulting in biased performance in a number of domains. For example, people often let their personal beliefs guide their thinking when it would be more optimal to use logic. Furthermore, people are often overconfident in their judgments and decisions, even when their reasoning performance is error prone. Perhaps surprisingly, we still know little about the cognitive mechanisms that promote effective thinking. The research proposed in my current grant application will make important headway towards understanding this by systematically examining the basic cognitive mechanisms supporting effective reasoning, particularly focusing on how metacognitive processes (e.g., subjective confidence) affect how we allocate our attention in reasoning and decision-making tasks. In addition, by including individual differences measures indexing cognitive ability and thinking styles, my lab will determine the extent to which the coupling of metacognition and attention varies as a function of key individual differences known to significantly affect reasoning performance. These are important research questions, as understanding the role of metacognition in guiding people's attention to relevant information in a reasoning task will help not only inform our understanding of the basic cognitive mechanisms underlying successful reasoning performance, but it will also ultimately help shape manipulations designed to reduce bias and promote effective reasoning, which is a secondary objective of the proposed research. Specifically, once the metacognitive and attentional mechanisms underlying reasoning performance are better understood, my lab will then empirically examine experimental manipulations that target those mechanisms to examine the degree to which attention to relevant dimensions of reasoning tasks, and overall reasoning performance, can be facilitated. At an academic level, the findings from the proposed studies will enable my lab to develop a more comprehensive model of how higher-level cognitive processes (e.g., metacognition) interact with lower-level cognitive processes (e.g., attention) when reasoning and decision-making. At a practical level, by gaining new insights into the basic cognitive mechanisms that promote effective reasoning and decision making, and determining how such mechanisms can be facilitated, my lab will be able to take important steps towards developing strategies that can be used to reduce bias and facilitate reasoning and decision making in domains that have real-world consequences (e.g., personal health, finance).