Eintrag in der Universitätsbibliographie der TU Chemnitz
I see how you reason: A Process-based Description of Abductive Reasoning
Kurzfassung in deutsch
Abduktives Schließen ist der Prozess des Suchens einer bestmöglichen Erklärung für eine Reihe von Beobachtungen. Die Theorie des abduktiven Schließens (TAR, Johnson & Krems, 2001) erlaubt detaillierte Prozessannahmen, die bisher jedoch nur teilweise im Detail getestet wurden. Diese Arbeit möchte dies mit Hilfe einer künstlichen Laboraufgabe (der Black Box – Aufgabe) und Blickbewegungsmessungen ermöglichen. Im ersten Teil werden auf Blickbewegungsmessung basierende Prozessmaße bewertet und dazu genutzt ein besseres Verständnis der in TAR postulierten Prozesse, wie beispielsweise die Konstruktion einen Situationsmodells und der Abruf relevanter Informationen, zu erhalten. Der zweite Teil untersucht die Beziehung zwischen Arbeitsgedächtnis und abduktivem Schließen indem die im Arbeitsgedächtnis gespeicherte Informationsmenge manipuliert und die Beziehung zwischen visuellem abduktiven Schließen und Arbeitsgedächtnisfähigkeiten untersucht wird. In einem letzten Teil wird ein Ausblick auf die Übertragbarkeit unserer Ergebnisse auf alltäglichere Aufgaben gegeben.
Kurzfassung in englisch
Abductive reasoning is the process of finding the best explanation for a set of observations. The theory of abductive reasoning (TAR, Johnson & Krems, 2001) allows detailed process assumptions that were only partly tested in detail up until now. This thesis employs an artificial abductive reasoning task, the Black Box task, and eye tracking measures in order to gain insight into the process. The first part of this thesis aims at evaluating process measures based on eye tracking and using them in order to gain a better understanding of the processes postulated in TAR such as the construction of a situation model or retrieval of relevant information. The second part investigates the relationship between working memory and abductive reasoning by manipulating the amount of information stored in memory and examining the relationship between visual abductive reasoning and working memory skills. In a last part a perspective to the transferability of our results to everyday life tasks is given. The first study focuses on differentiating between processes that take place during the encoding and the evaluation of observation information by comparing eye movement measures. In the second study, we tested process assumptions such as the construction of a mental representation from TAR using memory indexing, an eye tracking method that makes it possible to trace the retrieval of explanations currently held in working memory. Gaze analysis revealed that participants encode the presented evidence (i.e., observations) together with possible explanations into memory. When new observations are presented, the previously presented evidence and explanations are retrieved. With the memory indexing method, we were able to assess the process of information retrieval in abductive reasoning, which was previously believed to be unobservable. The theory of abductive reasoning (TAR; Johnson & Krems, 2001) assumes that when information is presented sequentially, new information is integrated into a mental representation called a situation model, the central data structure on which all reasoning processes are based. Since working memory capacity is limited, the question arises how reasoning might change with the amount of information that has to be processed in memory. To answer this question, we conducted a third experimental study, in which we manipulated whether previous observation information and previously found explanations had to be retrieved from memory or were still present in the visual array. We analyzed individual ratings of difficulty as well as behavioral data and reasoning outcomes. Our results provide evidence that people experience differences in task difficulty when more information has to be retrieved from memory. This is also evident in changes in the mental representation as reflected by eye tracking measures. However, these differences are not evident in the reasoning outcome. These findings suggest that individuals construct their situation model from both information in memory as well as external memory stores. The complexity of the model depends on the task at hand: when memory demands are high, only relevant information is included. With this compensation strategy, people are able to achieve similar reasoning outcomes even when faced with more difficult tasks. The precise relationship between reasoning and working memory capacity remains largely opaque. Combining data of both studies from chapter 3 and 4, we firstly investigated if reasoning performance differs due to differences in working memory capacity. Secondly, using eye tracking, we explored the relationship between the facets of working memory and the process of visuospatial reasoning. Therefore both, a test for storage and processing, and content components (verbal-numerical/ spatial) of working memory as well as an intelligence measure, were engaged. Results show a clear relationship between reasoning accuracy, spatial storage and processing components as well as intelligence. Process measures suggest that high spatial working memory ability might lead to the use of strategies optimizing the content and complexity of the mental representation on which abductive reasoning is based. In a fifth study, we aimed to investigate whether there are also indicators for the mechanisms postulated by TAR in a task that is closer to real life reasoning. Therefore, we asked participants to solve 12 jigsaw puzzles whereby the abductive task was the identification of the motive presented on the puzzles. Thereby, the pieces of the puzzles posed as observation and hypotheses to the motive of the puzzle as explanations. As a process tracing measure, we used thinking aloud. Verbal protocols were recorded, transcripted and carefully coded according to the operators and explanation types postulated in TAR. We found evidence that participants use most of the operators with a likeliness that significantly lies above chance level. We also found evidence of the existence of the different explanation types. Eye movements were able to give insight in the interrelations between working memory, attention, and action. Therefore, this work contributes to understanding abductive reasoning, not only by testing the assumptions of TAR, but also by finding relations between memory, action and thought. The results do not only account for abductive reasoning in an artificial task but also in everyday life reasoning.
| Universität: | Technische Universität Chemnitz | |
| Institut: | Forschergruppe Allgemeine Psychologie und Arbeitspsychologie | |
| Fakultät: | Fakultät für Human- und Sozialwissenschaften | |
| Dokumentart: | Dissertation | |
| Betreuer: | Krems, Josef (Prof. Dr.) | |
| URL/URN: | https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:ch1-qucosa2-744284 | |
| Quelle: | 2021. - 198 S. | |
| SWD-Schlagwörter: | Psychologie , Schlussfolgern , Repräsentation , Gedächtnis | |
| Freie Schlagwörter (Deutsch): | Abduktives Schließen , Eye Tracking , Prozessdaten , mentale Repräsentation , Arbeitsgedächtnis | |
| Freie Schlagwörter (Englisch): | abductive reasoning , eye tracking , process tracing , memory indexing , mental representation , working memory | |
| Sprache: | deutsch | |
| Tag der mündlichen Prüfung | 19.02.2021 | |
| OA-Lizenz | CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 |
