The DOI matches its Crossref record; 11 of the 11 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Teaching Reasoning
Open accessAbstract
Twentieth-century psychologists have been pessimistic about teaching reasoning, prevailing opinion suggesting that people may possess only domain-specific rules, rather than abstract rules; this would mean that training a rule in one domain would not produce generalization to other domains. Alternatively, it was thought that people might possess abstract rules (such as logical ones) but that these are induced developmentally through self-discovery methods and cannot be trained. Research suggests a much more optimistic view: even brief formal training in inferential rules may enhance their use for reasoning about everyday life events. Previous theorists may have been mistaken about trainability, in part because they misidentified the kind of rules that people use naturally.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Even brief training in statistical principles improves people's solutions on everyday reasoning problems related to those statistical principles (Nisbett et al., 1987).”
From The role of anomalous data in knowledge acquisition: A theoretical framework and implications for science instruction. (1993) · cites this paper as Nisbett et al., 1987
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124 · Cited by 28,810
The processes of causal attribution.
Kelley, H. H. (1973) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/h0034225 · Cited by 4,025
Holland, J. H., Holyoak, K. J., Nisbett, R. E., & Thagard, P. R. (1986) · The MIT Press eBooks · doi:10.7551/mitpress/3729.001.0001 · Cited by 1,534
Self-citationCheng, P. W., & Holyoak, K. J. (1985) · Cognitive Psychology · doi:10.1016/0010-0285(85)90014-3 · Cited by 1,463
Self-citationThe elusive thematic‐materials effect in Wason's selection task
Griggs, R. A., & Cox, J. R. (1982) · British Journal of Psychology · doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1982.tb01823.x · Cited by 859
The use of statistical heuristics in everyday inductive reasoning.
Nisbett, R. E., Krantz, D. H., Jepson, C., & Kunda, Z. (1983) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.90.4.339 · Cited by 836
Self-citationThe effects of statistical training on thinking about everyday problems
Fong, G. T., Krantz, D. H., & Nisbett, R. E. (1986) · Cognitive Psychology · doi:10.1016/0010-0285(86)90001-0 · Cited by 597
Self-citationPragmatic versus syntactic approaches to training deductive reasoning
Cheng, P. W., Holyoak, K. J., Nisbett, R. E., & Oliver, L. M. (1986) · Cognitive Psychology · doi:10.1016/0010-0285(86)90002-2 · Cited by 488
Self-citationHernstein, R. J., Nickerson, R. S., de Sánchez, M. D., & Swets, J. (1986) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/0003-066x.41.11.1279 · Cited by 266
Human Intelligence: The Model Is the Message
Sternberg, R. J. (1985) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.230.4730.1111 · Cited by 136
Hunt, E. B. (1983) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.6849125 · Cited by 113
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 4
- NEW YORK TIMES: 23 (6 3 1982).
- JEPSON, C, BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES 6: 494 (1983).
- Jowett, B., The Dialogues of Plato: 785 (1875).
- Thorndike, E., Princples of Teaching: 246 (1906).
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Culture and systems of thought: Holistic versus analytic cognition.
Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I., & Norenzayan, A. (2001) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.108.2.291 · Cited by 4,263
Self-citationWhen and where do we apply what we learn?: A taxonomy for far transfer
Barnett, S. M., & Ceci, S. J. (2002) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.128.4.612 · Cited by 2,076
Chinn, C. A., & Brewer, W. F. (1993) · Review of Educational Research · doi:10.3102/00346543063001001 · Cited by 1,393
Do “brain-training” programs work?
Simons, D. J., Boot, W. R., Charness, N., Gathercole, S. E., Chabris, C. F., Hambrick, D. Z., & Stine-Morrow, E. A. L. (2016) · Psychological Science in the Public Interest · doi:10.1177/1529100616661983 · Cited by 1,183
Critical Thinking and Subject Specificity: Clarification and Needed Research
Ennis, R. H. (1989) · Educational Researcher · doi:10.3102/0013189x018003004 · Cited by 1,024
Metadata
- Authors
- Nisbett, R. E., Fong, G. T., Lehman, D. R., & Cheng, P. W.
- Affiliations
- University of Michigan (US)
- ORCID
- Fong, Geoffrey T.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 1987-10-30
- Volume
- 238
- Issue
- 4827
- Pages
- 625-631
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W4249755205
- Cited by
- 272
- References
- 11
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 50.47
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Deep Blue (University of Michigan) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (5r01mh038466-03)
- National Institute of Mental Health (1 RO1 MH38466)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Education and Critical Thinking Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Strategies and Epistemologies
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Keywords
- reasoning, reasoning training, inference rules, abstract rules, domain-specific rules, transfer of training, rule induction, formal instruction, everyday reasoning
- MeSH terms
- Education, Humans, Learning, Logic, Statistics as Topic
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
