Work

A longitudinal study of the effects of undergraduate education on reasoning

Year: 1990

Type: article

Abstract: The effects of undergraduate training in the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences on inductive reasoning requiring the use of statistical and methodological principles and on reasoning about problems in conditional logic were examined.Social science training produced large effects on statistical and methodological reasoning, whereas natural science and humanities training produced smaller, but still marginally significant, effects.Natural science and humanities training produced large effects on ability to reason about problems in conditional logic, whereas social science training did not.The improvement in conditional reasoning among natural science students appears to be due, in large part, to knowledge gained in mathematics courses.The results indicate that inferential rule systems, as taught by various fields, can affect reasoning about a wide range of problems.The findings lend support to a version of the premodern formal discipline hypothesis.

Source: Deep Blue (University of Michigan)

Authors: Lehman, Darrin R., Nisbett, Richard E.

Institutions: University of British Columbia, University of Michigan

Language: English

Topic: Education and Critical Thinking Development

Subfield: Education

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Science Foundation, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Office of Naval Research

Awards: Training For Formal Vs. Pragmatic Approaches to Reasoning, Overcoming Domain Specificity of Inferential Rules, Inference, Instruction, and Pragmatic Reasoning Schemes