The role of text representation in students' ability to identify fallacious arguments.

Full Abstract

Informal reasoning fallacies are arguments that, though they may seem persuasive, are not valid. The psychological aspect of informal reasoning fallacies, specifically the identification of factors that influence students' ability to identify fallacies, has not been the subject of empirical study. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that subjects' ability to identify fallacious arguments is associated with the representation of the argumentative text in the cognitive system. In the first experiment, we tested the hypothesis through a recall task. In the second experiment, we tested the hypothesis through a classification task. The results of the experiments confirm the research hypothesis and point to the role of argumentative structures in argumentation tasks.

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Author information

Author/s: Neuman, Yair (Y); Weizman, Erez (E);

Affiliation: Department of Education, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel. yneuman(-atsign-)bgumail.bgu.ac.il

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology (Q J Exp Psychol A), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Jul; vol 56 (issue 5) : pp 849-864

Dates: Created 2003/07/09; Completed 2003/10/03; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12850989, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

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