The Elusive Pragmatic Reasoning Schemas Effect

The present study examined the pragmatic reasoning schema theory of deductive reasoning—specifically, its explanation of performance on the selection task. Experiment 1 replicated a result crucial to the theory, the finding of facilitation on abstract versions of the selection task based on pragmatic reasoning schemas. However, Experiments 2, 3, and 4 established that this facilitation was dependent upon two presentation factors: (1) the presence of explicit negatives on the NOT P and NOT Q cards and (2) the inclusion of a checking context in the problem statement. These results are discussed in terms of Evans's two-stage (heuristic/analytic processing) model of reasoning.