TY - JOUR

T1 - Information Stored in Memory Affects Abductive Reasoning

AU - Klichowicz, Anja

AU - Lippoldt, Daniela Eileen

AU - Rosner, Agnes

AU - Krems, Josef F.

N1 - Funding Information: Agnes Rosner gratefully acknowledges the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant 157432). We thank Alper Kumcu and a second anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on a previous version of this paper. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. Agnes Rosner gratefully acknowledges the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant 157432).

PY - 2021/11

Y1 - 2021/11

N2 - Abductive reasoning describes the process of deriving an explanation from given observations. The theory of abductive reasoning (TAR; Johnson and Krems, Cognitive Science 25:903–939, 2001) assumes that when information is presented sequentially, new information is integrated into a mental representation, a situation model, the central data structure on which all reasoning processes are based. Because working memory capacity is limited, the question arises how reasoning might change with the amount of information that has to be processed in memory. Thus, we conducted an experiment (N = 34) in which we manipulated whether previous observation information and previously found explanations had to be retrieved from memory or were still visually present. 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, no differences are found between groups 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: 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 tasks that are more difficult. This implies that people are able to adapt their strategy to the task in order to keep their reasoning successful.

AB - Abductive reasoning describes the process of deriving an explanation from given observations. The theory of abductive reasoning (TAR; Johnson and Krems, Cognitive Science 25:903–939, 2001) assumes that when information is presented sequentially, new information is integrated into a mental representation, a situation model, the central data structure on which all reasoning processes are based. Because working memory capacity is limited, the question arises how reasoning might change with the amount of information that has to be processed in memory. Thus, we conducted an experiment (N = 34) in which we manipulated whether previous observation information and previously found explanations had to be retrieved from memory or were still visually present. 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, no differences are found between groups 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: 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 tasks that are more difficult. This implies that people are able to adapt their strategy to the task in order to keep their reasoning successful.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85099294507&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.31234/OSF.IO/RU3P5

DO - 10.31234/OSF.IO/RU3P5

M3 - Article

VL - 85

SP - 3119

EP - 3133

JO - Psychological Research

JF - Psychological Research

SN - 0340-0727

IS - 8

ER -