This study investigated differences among student writers at three grade levels (i.e., 6, 8, and 10), and between expert writers and students, in terms of (a) the extent to which argument structures were used in their persuasive texts, (b) the complexity of these argument structures (as measured by depth and elaboration), and (c) the use of general semantic structures and conjunctive ties to represent argument substructures. In addition, the study determined the predictive relationship between the holistic scores assigned to student texts and argument structure measures. To identify and analyze argument structure a model was developed that could account for the variability in structure observed across a range of persuasive writing situations. The model was a modified version of Toulmin's (1958) schematic, and its characteristics were defined using categories derived from a theory of semantic representation in discourse. / Results of the structural analyses indicated that (a) argument was the predominant organizational structure for expert and student writers, (b) over 80% of students produced elaborated arguments involving some form of opposition, (c) experts produced more arguments and more complex arguments than students, and (d) expert texts contained relatively higher frequencies for warrants, countered rebuttals, and modals, and student use of these argument substructures increased with grade level. The general semantic and linguistic analyses revealed the following patterns particular to experts: (a) the use of identification types of claims, (b) an increased use of modals and decreased use of opinions as marks of argumentation, and (c) an infrequent use of causal conjunctions to mark data structures. Results of a forward stepwise regression analysis revealed that argument structure complexity accounted for 40% of the variance associated with quality ratings assigned to students' texts. Two other variables were significant predictors: number of supporting structures and number of opposing structures. / The results were interpreted from a rhetorical perspective: the developmental and expertise-related patterns of performance associated with the use of particular argument substructures, and the representation of these substructures were seen as reflecting an awareness of and ability to manipulate one's audience---skills that are necessary to achieve the goals of persuasive discourse.

This study evaluates the hypothesis that medical reasoning in real clinical situations involves multiple cognitive tasks whose complex interactions are coordinated in an opportunistic manner. A problem-solving architecture originating from research in artificial intelligence, the blackboard model, is proposed as an integrative framework for representing these characteristics of situated medical reasoning and for reconciling different theoretical perspectives about medical reasoning. A naturalistic clinical situation, involving the manipulation of the patient record by an internist while managing a case, provides the empirical data for this in depth qualitative case study. The video recording of the subject's record manipulation behavior allows the cueing of retrospective think-aloud verbalizations and the preservation of the real-time aspects of problem solving. The association of theory-driven task analysis using the blackboard model with data-driven propositional analysis confirm that medical reasoning in this situation indeed comprises a variety of cognitive tasks, which are described. Also, the opportunistic character of control knowledge and the complex interactions between control strategies and cognitive tasks are confirmed and described. The blackboard model allows the principled representation of these characteristics of situated medical reasoning, thus supporting its integrative character. However, certain aspects of the data, mostly related to the ambivalence of several concepts that are used by the subject during the course of problem-solving, are not explained in the most parsimonious manner by the blackboard model, nor by symbolic cognitive architectures in general. A connectionist alternative is proposed which seems to better account for these phenomena. Finally, a tentative neurophysiological interpretation of the blackboard framework is offered for integrating the symbolic and connectionist perspectives. This study has additional implications con

The three studies that constitute this thesis investigated the influence of cognitive and social factors on reasoning in social environments. The key research issues investigated were: (a) the influence of status on distributed reasoning, (b) the influence of social interactions and status on the type of representational change, and (c) identifying the mechanisms of social interactions that cause representational change. Study one investigated how the status of scientists presenting their research at laboratory meetings influenced distributed reasoning. When the presenter was of high status, the Principal Investigator was an important influence on the distributed reasoning. When the presenter was of low status, other lab members were more likely to contribute to distributed reasoning. Study two examined if social interactions between scientists at laboratory meetings result in minor or major representational change. Also investigated in study two was if the status of the laboratory members influenced the type of representational change that occurred during social interactions. The results showed that a scientist changes her or his representation by generalizing over two or more representations that were discussed during social interactions. The Principal Investigator was a key contributor to representational change involving generalization. Study three examined how dyadic social interactions influenced representational change. It was found that the individual who initiates representational discussion after identifying a problem with her or his representation is the dyad member who is most likely to change her or his representation. Representational change also required that the other dyad member clarify the initiator's representation problem. It was also found that representational change for the initiator involved incorporating a certain representation that was provided by the other dyad member into an incomplete representation. Finally, it was found that the op

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of cased-based learning, writing and peer discussions on learning about digestive diseases in a computer-based learning environment, BioWorld. This method was called the Grand Rounds method. Thirty-one, ninth grade biology students participated in the study. Two classes were randomly selected as the Rounds group and the No Rounds group. All students worked collaboratively in pairs to solve diagnostic problems on BioWorld. The Rounds group then engaged in the Grand Rounds activities while the No Rounds group conducted a web search and solved a final BioWorld problem. Both treatments demonstrated significant knowledge gains of digestive problems from pretest to posttest but the gains were greater in the Rounds group. There were no significant changes from pre to post questionnaire in students' attitudes towards biology or peer work/discussion. The verbal protocols revealed students used diagnostic heuristics while solving cases, and discourse communities emerged among the students. Overall, this study confirms the benefits of written and oral discourse, and authentic learning activities in classrooms.

This thesis presents the RAP system: a Reasoner About Physiology. RAP consists of two modules: knowledge representation and reasoning. The knowledge representation module describes commonsense anatomy and physiology at various levels of abstraction and detail. This representation is broad (covers several physiological systems), dense (the number of relationships between anatomical and physiological elements is high) and uniform (the same kind of formalism is used to represent anatomy, physiology and their interrelationships). These features lead to a 'natural' representation of naive physiology which is, therefore, easy to understand and use. The reasoning module performs two tasks: 1) it infers the behaviour of a complex physiological process using the behaviours of its subprocesses and the relationships between them; 2) it reasons about the effect of introducing a fault in the model. In order to reason about the behaviour of a complex process, RAP uses a mechanism which consists of the following tasks: (i) understanding how subprocesses behave; (ii) comprehending how these subprocesses affect each others behaviours; (iii) "aggregating" these behaviours together to obtain the behaviour of the top level process; (iv) giving that process a temporal context in which to act. RAP uses limited commonsense knowledge about faults to reason about the effect of a fault in the model. It discovers new processes which originate as a consequence of a fault and detects processes which misbehave due to a fault. The effects of both newly generated and misbehaving processes are then propagated throughout the model to obtain the overall effect of the fault. RAP represents and reasons about naive physiology and is a step forward in the development of systems which use commonsense knowledge.

In the domain of reasoning and decision making, some dual-process theorists have suggested that people are highly efficient at detecting conflicting outputs engendered by competing intuitive and analytic processes (De Neys & Glumicic, 2008; De Neys, Vartanian & Goel, 2008). For example, De Neys and Glumicic (2008) demonstrated that participants’ reason longer about problems that are characterized by a conflict between a stereotypical personality description and a base-rate probability of group membership. Crucially, this increase occurred even when participants gave the nominally erroneous stereotypical response (i.e., “neglecting” the base-rate probability), indicating that their participants detected that there was a conflict and, as a result, engaged in slow, analytic processing to resolve it. However, this finding, and much of the additional support for the efficient conflict detection hypothesis, has come from base-rate neglect problems constructed with probabilities (e.g., 995 doctors and 5 nurses) that were much more extreme than typically used in studies of base-rate neglect. I varied the base-rate probabilities over five experiments and compared participants’ response time for conflict problems with non-conflict problems. It was demonstrated that the integral increase in response time for stereotypical responses to conflict problems was fully mediated by extreme probabilities. I conclude that humans are not as efficient at detecting when they are engaging in biased reasoning as De Neys and colleagues have claimed.

This thesis examined the knowledge and processes that adults use to reason about moral dilemmas. Two contrasting analyses of moral reasons, Kohlberg's justice orientation and Gilligan's response orientation, were reviewed and criticized. From this a Moral Reasoning Grammar which formally characterizes the semantics of the justice and response moral orientations was developed. Specifically, the Moral Reasoning Grammar distinguished reasoning based on principles and their defense from reasoning based on narrative and social-interactive knowledge. The Moral Reasoning Grammar was applied to subjects' protocols to determine the extent to which these two orientations characterized subjects' verbal responses to moral problems. Application of the Moral Reasoning Grammar resulted in good coverage of subjects' verbalizations which reliably differentiated knowledge and processes used by subjects resolving moral problems from either a justice or response orientation. The justice orientation characterized the four male subjects' protocols and the response orientation characterized the four female protocols. The small sample precludes any generalization of this finding. The Moral Reasoning Grammar and results were discussed in terms of further psychological research, an expanded and more comprehensive philosophical approach to moral reasoning, and the potential educational implications.

This study aimed to enhance understanding of the moral reasoning of gifted children. While research has explored the justice moral reasoning of gifted children (Arbuthnot, 1973; Chovan & Freeman, 1993; Gross, 1993; Henderson, Gold, & Clarke, 1984; Howard-Hamilton, 1994), this study explored prosocial moral reasoning, moral reasoning which involves conflict between one??s own needs and desires and the needs and desires of others. In addition, this study sought to gather empirical evidence for literature claims that gifted children have higher levels of empathy than their age peers (Lovecky, 1997; Piechowski, 2003; Silverman, 1993b). The study aimed to investigate the possible relationships among giftedness, prosocial reasoning and empathy. Primary (elementary) school students aged between 9 and 12 years in the Sydney Metropolitan area were administered The Prosocial Reasoning Objective Measure (PROM), The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and The Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescents (IOE) questionnaires. The results for gifted students (n = 176) were compared with a control group of students not identified as gifted (n = 128). The study found that gifted students used more of the highest level of prosocial reasoning in the PROM than their age peers. Furthermore, gifted students used more empathic concern, fantasy empathy and cognitive empathy than their age peers, although ability was not predictive of the other empathy factors in the instruments. Small but significant correlations between some types of empathy and some levels of prosocial reasoning were also found, indicating possible relationships between empathy and prosocial reasoning. Interviews were conducted with selected students (n = 13) from the above sample, along with some of their teachers (n = 5) and parents (n = 2). Despite the small sample, the interviews seemed to indicate a relationship between experience with bullying and prosocial reasoning. The study highlights the need for an empathy questionnaire that specifically tests cognitive and affective empathy in children. A new questionnaire may unravel some of the seemingly contradictory results in the present study. The study also provides empirical evidence that gifted children use higher levels of prosocial moral reasoning and empathy than their age-peers.

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Psychology, 1972. / Includes bibliographical references.