title: The right-hemisphere bias in conditional reasoning: a short report on multiple failures to replicate previous findings.
abstract: The present set of studies attempted to replicate Gellatly's (1985) findings that were supportive of Evan's (1982) hypothesis that the right hemisphere produces a selective bias towards the incorrect solution of a complex reasoning task. Subjects solved problems of the form "if p then q." In four studies, participants simultaneously performed a bottle--balancing task on each hand to interfere with processing of the reasoning task in the right hemisphere. In the fifth study, the bottle--balancing task was replaced by a finger--sequencing task. The results of the five studies did not show that the interference with right-hemisphere activity resulted in better performance on the conditional-reasoning task. It is concluded that the hypothesis of a right-hemisphere bias in conditional reasoning is still in need of reliable findings.
authors.affiliation: Départment de psychologie, Université de Moncton, Canada.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cormier
authors.forename: M K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Cameron
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cross
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral; D006801:Humans; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D011597:Psychomotor Performance