摘要
通过三个实验研究了属性的中心性程度对归纳推理的影响,结果表明,在归纳推理中存在属性中心性效应,中心属性比其他属性(次中心属性、再次中心属性)更能影响归纳推理。但属性中心性效应的出现受到了前提对象和结论对象相似性程度的制约,当前提对象和结论对象的相似程度高时,中心属性比其他属性更能影响归纳推理;随着相似性水平的降低,中心属性的归纳推理力度越来越弱,而次中心属性、再次中心属性的归纳推理力度则会依次表现出越来越强的趋势,到最后当前提对象和结论对象的属性完全不相似时,再次中心属性的归纳推理力度达到最高水平,而中心属性的归纳推理力度则降低到最低水平。由于再次中心属性的归纳推理力度的最高水平没有显著高于随机水平,而中心属性的归纳推理力度的最低水平却显著低于随机水平,因此,研究者认为,在前提对象和结论对象完全不相似的情况下,被试将确信不能采用中心属性来进行归纳推理的力度判断,而采用猜测的方式选择了肯定可以排除的项目之外的其他项目,这体现了具有不确定的归纳推理活动的过程的典型特征。
Introduction Previous research on property effect mainly examined how property stability affected inductive reasoning. The property stability effect cannot explain all property - related questions. Gelman （1988） discovered that Grade 2 children were more capable of generalizing animals＇ anatomical features （e.g., this rabbit has a spleen inside） but not their functional features （e.g., you can loll with it） to another instance of the same category. In this study, subjects did not consider the stability of the property when performing inductive reasoning.Yet their answers implied the property effect. So what is this effect based on？ Hadjichristidis （2004） proved that the degree of property centrality plays a role in inductive reasoning. However, we suspect 2 potential problems may occur in their experimental process; hence, we conducted 3 modified experiments to investigate the property centrality effect in inductive reasoning and examined whether our results were consistent with those of Hadjichristidis＇ study.
Method Three experiments were performed to analyze the effect of different property centrality degrees on inductive reasoning. The first experiment was in accordance with that conducted in Hadjichristidis＇ study, except for the different procedure. The second experiment was the same as that carried out by Hadjichristidis （2004）. The last experiment was to examine property centrality effect using expanded similarity and centrality conditions in order to complete and refine our analyses of this effect and its psychological process.
Results All 3 experiments showed the following results. Inductive scores of the central property were higher than those of the less central property under higher similarity conditions. However, with a decrease in the relatedness of premise and conclusion, the effect of central property on participants＇ induction process showed a decreasing trend; an increasing trend was found for the less central property （least central property in experiment 3）. The central property was no longer advantageous under low similarity conditions; its average value was significantly lower than that of the less central property.
Conclusions A property centrality effect exists in the process of inductive reasoning. Central property has more effect on inductive reasoning than other properties （less central property and least central property）. However, the appearance of the effect was constrained by the similarity between premise and conclusion concepts. When the similarity is high, the central property showed more inductive ability than the less central property. The effect of central property on inductive reasoning ability decreased with a decrease in the similarity between premise and conclusion concepts; in contrast, the effect of the less central property and least central property on inductive reasoning ability increased. When premise and conclusion were no longer related, the inductive strength of the least central property reached the highest level, while that of the central property reached the lowest level. Since the inductive strength of the least central property was not significantly higher than the random level all times and the lowest inductive strength of the central property was significantly lower than the random level, we propose that when premise and conclusion concepts were unrelated, the subjects were sure that they could not choose the central property and made random guesses based on reasoning from other properties. This embodied the typical characteristic of uncertain inductive reasoning process.
出处
《心理学报》
CSSCI
CSCD
北大核心
2007年第5期826-836,共11页
Acta Psychologica Sinica
基金
国家自然科学基金项目(30370488)
国家级重点学科项目(NSKD06003)
关键词
属性中心性
相似性
归纳推理
property centrality effect, similarity, inductive reasoning.
