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= PRAGMATIC REASONING SCHEMAS =

Pragmatic reasoning schemas (PRS) proposed by Cheng and Holyoak (1985) are mental knowledge structures or frameworks consisting of generalised clusters of rules which individuals define according to their interpretation of the event in relation to classes of goals or types of relationships (such as permissions, causations and obligations). PRS are a form of deductive reasoning applicable in deontic contexts. They are linguistically based and use neither syntactic context-free rules of inference (formal logic) nor use representations of specific experiences through memory-cueing. The premise is people reason using abstract mental frameworks or structures known as schemas and these develop based on knowledge extracted from ordinary life experiences such as assessing compliance with or violation of permission and obligation rules.

Theoretical Background
The empirical evidence applied by the pragmatic reasoning theory is mostly based on the performance of Wason's selection task which the proponents, Cheng and Holyoak (1985), synthesized research. The standard abstract conditional relationship task [2] was generated by Peter C Wason (1966):

Standard abstract problem- Wason's selection task (1966)
(In all tasks subjects are presented with a conditional rule: If P then Q followed by four cards denoting P, Not P, Q, Not Q)

Rule: If a card has a vowel on one side, it has an even number on the other side. Which card(s) do you need to turn over to verify if this rule is true or false?

The four cards show: ' A', 'D',  '4'  and '7'.

The P and Not Q cards (A and 7) should be turned over. However, subjects in Wason's experiment and replicated studies found that subjects often pick the P card (A) or the P and Q cards (A and 4 ) despite the fact that the rule is true regardless of what is on Q and Not P cards (4 and D). In an attempt to understand and improve the poor performance, many psychologists have varied various aspects of the task. The experimental paradigm has been adopted in most cognitive literature in testing effects of content in reasoning due to the contrast in its simplicity and subjects’ poor performance. Typically 10% of subjects get the task correct including highly intelligent individuals like Ph.D. scientists arousing arguments about human rationality and formal operations due to the repeated fallacies noted. Variability in performing a range of selection tasks is also common amongst subjects whereby subjects get the selection task correct in one context and fail in another syntactically equivalent task.

Theory
Cheng and Holyoak (1985) provide empirical evidence on the effects of content in reasoning a conditional relationship such as Wason's selection task. They attest that deontic inferences on the action that ought to be taken are governed by schemas which are specialised for contexts involving permissions or obligations, that is, in a situation that presents semantic aspects related to permission or obligaton, all the rules related to the situation are evoked and as such the context provides the precondition(s) that trigger the regulation of the voluntary action to be taken to meet the specified goal.

In a conditional permission, satisfying a precondition confers the right to take an action: if then  where as in a conditional obligation it confers duty: if then  and this is conveyed by the modals may and must . Noteworthy and to avoid fallacies, these conditionals are pragmatically bi-conditional at the deontic level and should be distinguished at this level (rights and duties) from the level of the overt action required. This suggests that in a conditional permission, the action need not be taken just because the precondition is satisfied, and in a conditional obligation the action may be taken even if the precondition is not satisfied. The theory suggests that both permissions and obligations can be defined by four possible situations guided by four rules relevant to a schema. In the selection task if the rule has content that evokes a schema performance will be facilitated.

Permission Schema
Rule 1: if the action is to be taken, then the precondition must be satisfied

Rule 2: if the action is not to be taken, then the precondition need not be satisfied

Rule 3: if the precondition is satisfied, then the action may be taken and

Rule 4: if the precondition is not satisfied, then the action must not be taken

Obligation Schema
Rule 1: if the precondition is satisfied, then the action must be taken

Rule 2: if the precondition is not satisfied, then the action need not taken

Rule 3: if the action is to be taken, then the precondition may have been satisfied

Rule 4: if the action is not to be taken, then the precondition must not have been satisfied

Research
One of their popular experiments was a repeated-measure design in which subjects were given a descriptive task similar to Wason's standard abstract problem as a control and abstract permission problem :

Abstract permission problem- Cheng and Holyoak (1985)
Suppose you are an authority checking whether people are obeying certain regulations. The regulations all have the general form, “If one is to take action ‘P’, then one must first satisfy precondition ‘Q’.” In other words, in order to be permitted to do ' P ', one must first have fulfilled prerequisite ' Q '. The cards below contain information on four people: One side of the card indicates whether or not a person has taken action ' P ', the other indicates whether or not the same individual has fulfilled precondition  'Q'.

In order to check that a certain regulation is being followed which of the cards below would you turn over? Turn over only those that you need to check to be sure.

The four cards showed:’Has taken Action P’; ‘ Has not taken action P’; ‘ Has fulfilled precondition Q’ and ‘ Has not fulfilled precondition Q’.

61% were correct when presented abstract permission problem first compared to 19% correct when presented Wason's standard abstract problem first. Such improvements in performance had not been noticed in prior theories suggesting a permission schema was evoked. Girrotto et al (1988)  study with children 9-10 year old elicited a 71% correct response to permission condition compared to 11% in a formal condition further supporting the theory. Similarly 6-8 year olds solved a selection task with rules interpretable as obligations. This also solidified the assumption that subjects lacking prior knowledge on the specific permission rule can apply a contextual rationale (without memory-cueing) enabling them to understand the rule in order to produce the same performances.

Neural activity in selection task
The selection task continues to stir considerable interest among psychologists with current research focusing on neural activity during performance of the task. Neural activity in bilateral occipital, parietal and frontal lobe activation has been found in subjects performing abstract selection task in fMRI study by Canessa et al (2005) in which they used arbitrary descriptive statements such as ‘if someone does…, then he does…’ and socially meaningful statements ..‘if you give me…, then I give you…’.

With training on how to falsify conditional rules and overcome perceptual ‘traps’ such as the matching bias, a shift from bilateral posterior regions (ventral and dorsal pathways) in the ‘perceptual’ condition to a left frontal network was evidenced by Houde et al (2000) .

Criticism
The abstract permission schema problem in Cheng and Holyoak's experiment is slightly different to the original task as it asks subjects to select only the cards necessary to determine whether a rule was violated in a condition they have already given the rule as true unlike in the standard abstract version by Wason where subjects have to decide whether the rule is true or false. Cueing is therefore aided in the interpretation of the permission schema problem thus facilitation in the task may be attributed to its violation format.

P       erformance can be facilitated in performing selection tasks by explicit negatives on the NOT P and NOT Q cards and a violation checking context prompting attention to all of the cards and leading subjects to engage in more analytic processing. Facilitation is therefore not the result of evoking pragmatic reasoning schemas and the effect from applying these is “elusive” similarly to the earlier suggestion of the thematic effect.

Heuristic-analytic theory
Evan's (1984) heuristic-analytic theory of reasoning, under the dual-process theory of reasoning, explains cognitive biases observed when performing reasoning tasks and why logical competence exhibited in one task may not be demonstrated in other comparable tasks. The theory highlights two kinds of cognitive processes: heuristic processes which generate selective representations of the problem content and analytical processes which derive from the above inferences or judgements from the representations. The theory assumes that preconscious heuristic processes facilitates reasoning by forming mental models which in turn contextualize presented problems through the retrieval and application of prior knowledge and beliefs. These may determine judgments and inferences (reasoning) thus the second analytical stage is applied to translating these pragmatically cued beliefs into relevant responses under the experiment instructions. Alternatively, the analytic stage may be applied to actively inhibit default representations and responses cued by the heuristic system and to modify or replace these through conscious strategic thinking.