Propositional reasoning and working memory: the role of prior training and pragmatic content.

Working memory involvement in propositional reasoning was explored after different kinds of training. The training conditions aimed to reduce the impact of non-analytic heuristics and to enhance analytic inference processes according to mental logic theories, the mental model theory, and the theory of pragmatic reasoning schemata. Following an initial training phase, secondary task interference was investigated using concurrent spatial tapping (Experiment 1), random number generation (Experiment 2), and articulatory suppression (Experiment 3). A training condition practicing the construction and use of mental models via a truth table task increased the disruption of reasoning performance by random number generation and articulatory suppression, whereas the other training conditions did not affect susceptibility to secondary task interference. The results corroborate implications of the mental model theory of reasoning.

Training propositional reasoning.

Two experiments compared the effects of four training conditions on propositional reasoning. A syntactic training demonstrated formal derivations, in an abstract semantic training the standard truth-table definitions of logical connectives were explained, and a domain-specific semantic training provided thematic contexts for the premises of the reasoning task. In a control training, an inductive reasoning task was practised. In line with the account by mental models, both kinds of semantic training were significantly more effective than the control and the syntactic training, whereas there were no significant differences between the control and the syntactic training, nor between the two kinds of semantic training. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern of effects using a different set of syntactic and domain-specific training conditions.

[Memory advantage of performed actions: comments on multimodal memory theory]. / Gedächtnisvorteil ausgeführter Handlungen: Anmerkungen zur multimodalen Gedächtnistheorie.

Based on the integration of the memory advantage for subject-performed actions into the multimodal theory of episodic memory by J. Engelkamp (1997), three issues referring to the so-called enactment effect are discussed and addressed by statistical r-analyses. Firstly, the empirical basis of the functional distinction between motor and non-motor memory resources by means of dual-task experiments is questioned. Secondly, a multinomial modeling analysis is presented which aims at the contributions of automatic and controlled memory processes to the enactment effect in the process-dissociation paradigm. Finally, the effect of enactment on memory for serial order information is discussed with respect to recent accounts of serial memory.