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This thesis investigated the influence of situational knowledge on the performance of two common tasks; category member generation under a free-emission procedure and the judgement of similarity between two items using rating scales. In both tasks, self-report protocols were used to identify the strategies that people seemed to be using to complete the tasks. The main goal was to identify the role of situational knowledge in the organisation of semantic memory. Traditional models would not predict a role for situational knowledge in either of the target tasks. In the category member generation studies (Chapter 2) participants frequently instantiated situations or perspectives to cue retrieval of category members for both taxonomic and ad hoc categories. Chapter 3 investigated the factors that determine subjective similarity: category type, typicality, context and presence or absence of self-report. The quantitative data analysis showed the need for careful qualifications to previous claims concerning the effect of context on similarity (Barsalou, 1982). Specifically, ad hoc category members were rated more similar with context only when judgements were made without self-report and when items were relatively typical. Self-report protocols showed that co-occurrence of items in a situation frequently entered into judgements of similarity. Chapter 4 investigated the role of events in determining the strength of this 'thematic' similarity. Individual indices of association strength between the items and an event were shown to predict similarity ratings - thus confirming that thematic similarity is driven, at least partially, by the association of items to common settings. The findings lend empirical weight to theoretical positions that present memory for situational information as an integral part of conceptual knowledge. This approach may underpin a new direction for research into concepts in both normal and clinical adult populations.

Probabilistic reasoning is a distinct type of reasoning which previous evidence has found to be particularly difficult for both naive and expert participants in laboratory research. The current study looked at probabilistic reasoning performance in the light of dual- process theories of thinking and reasoning, using thinking style measures to investigate whether normative reasoning is indeed most often associated with a tendency to reason analytically, rather than heuristically. The tasks were presented both as probabilities, requiring participants to think of the chance of a given event happening once and as frequencies, requiring participants to imagine a large number of times or people, and suggesting what number of these might involve the given event. The latter is believed to prime the analytical process of reasoning, particularly when natural, rather than normalised, frequencies are used. Two age groups were used in order to examine the relationship between cognitive ageing and probabilistic reasoning, and to provide greater variability in a range of individual differences. Using samples of young participants (18-32 years) and older participants (>60 years) the studies reported in this thesis did find a consistent effect of format, whereby those in the frequency format showed both fewer fundamental reasoning fallacies on conjunctive and disjunctive tasks, and lower levels of error, as measured by absolute distance from the normatively correct answer. The format of the tasks - whether probability or frequency - was also an effective predictor of responses to two different Bayesian tasks. Many of the findings regarding the format of the tasks were consistent with dual process theories of reasoning. There was no effect of age on reasoning performance, despite predictions that older individuals would show less analytical reasoning than the younger group. There was however an interaction effect between the format of the tasks and age group, whereby older participants' performance did not benefit from the frequency wording, indicating that they were either not primed to reason analytically, or that they were primed to do so but were unable to do so to the extent that they could obtain the normatively correct response. More surprisingly, there was no consistent relationship between thinking styles and reasoning performance. 7 parison between current results and previous literature continues to highlight the . que nature of probabilistic reasoning, and the above findings are considered as providing continued support for dual process theories of reasoning. Future research in this area may need to find more accurate ways of assessing an individual's preferred thinking styles, as well as further investigating the nature of the differences between the processes used in completing inclusive and exclusive disjunctive tasks. The measure of reasoning error developed in this current research would also benefit from greater application and further investigation of possible refinements in order to continue to increase our knowledge of how people reason with probabilities.

Text in Afrikaans / 'n Ondersoek word gedoen na die aard, die oorsprong en die geloofwaardigheid van die inligtingsvetwerkingsbenadering in die kognitiewe sielkunde. Reeds vir die antieke Griekse denkers vorm logika 'n uitdrukking van die essensie van rede. Hierdie beskouing sou tydens die sewentiende eeu ontwikkel word tot die gedagte aan die subjek as 'n innerlike ruimte waarbinne die wereld van objekte in terme van logies-wiskundige rekonstruksies geken word. Die materialistiese beskouing reken dat alle dinge op hierdie wyse kenbaar is, maar ontken die subjek as vootwaarde vir sulke kennis, deur te poog om ook dit tot die objektiewe orde te reduseer. Die inligtingsteorie volg uit die ontstaan van die wiskundige logika, en hied 'n algemene teorie van probleemoplossing, die teorie van formele sisteme. Dit lewer 'n model vir die denke as die manipulering van simbole d.m.v. formele manipulasiereels. Hierdie simbole is abstrakte objekte, slegs onderskeibaar aan die hand van hulle vorm, maar kan onderling in hulle logiese samehang die wetmatige relasies tussen dinge soos dit in die wereld voorkom behou, en so dien as voorstellings van die wereld. Die funksionalistiese benadering tot denke is 'n poging om die probleem van die verhouding tussen denke en gedrag (die subjek-objekprobleem) op te los deur 'n toepassing van die inligtingsteorie. Funksionaliste wat die betekenisaspek of intensionele inhoud van die denke emstig opneem, reken dat terwyl voorstellings innerlik funksioneer as simbole in 'n formele sisteem, dit ook dien as verwysings na objekte in die ervaringswereld. Diegene wat 'n materialistiese reduksionisme aanvaarbaar vind ontken bloot die verwysingsvlak, en beskou die innerlike vetwerkings suiwer as sintaktiese prosesse. Aan die hand van 'n ontleding van die inligtingsvetwerkingsbenadering in verskillende manifestasies daarvan, word aangetoon dat die oplossing wat gebied word vir die probleem van die verhouding tussen denke en gedrag onsuksesvol is. Solank die onderliggende objektivistiese vooraannames gehandhaaf word, is die probleem waarskynlik in beginsel onoplosbaar. 'n Verskuiwing van perspektief is wenslik. Aandag moet gegee word aan die konkrete betrokkenheid van 'n mens in sy wereld, wat hy in handeling tot uitdrukking bring, en wat in taal binne 'n gemeenskaplike raamwerk geplaas word. / An inquiry is conducted into the nature, origins, and tenability of the information processing approach in cognitive psychology. Logic regarded as the essence of reason originates with classical Greek philosophy. In the seventeenth century this developed into the idea of the subject as an inner space where the world of objects is known by way of a mathematical-logical reconstruction. To materialists all things are known in this way, but the existence of the subject as a precondition for such knowledge is denied, by attempting to reduce it to the world of objects. Information theory developed in the wake of mathematical logic, and presents a general theory of problem-solving in the theory of formal systems. This suggests a model of the mind in terms of the manipulation of symbols by way of formal rules. Such symbols are abstract objects, individuated only by their form. Through the logical relationships among them they are able to maintain the lawlike relationships that exist among things in the world. In this way they serve as representations of the world. The functionalist approach to mind is an attempt to solve the problem of the relationship between thought and behaviour (i.e. the subject-object problem) by the application of information theory. Those functionalists that take the aspect of meaning or the intentional content of the mind seriously, argue that while representations function inwardly as symbols in a formal system, they also refer to objects in the world of experience. Materialist reductionists simply deny the level of referral, and view the inner computations as a purely syntactical process. By analyzing the information processing approach in various guises, it is shown that the solution given to the problem of the relationship between mind and behaviour does not succeed. As long as the underlying objectivist assumptions are maintained, this problem appears to be insoluble. A shift of perspective is suggested. Attention should be directed to the concrete involvement of a person with his world, as expressed in action, and how this is placed in a communal frame of reference through the power of language. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology)