Priming in deduction: a spatial arrangement task.
The mental model theory assumes that people reason by manipulating mental representations of states of the word, called "mental models." In the present study we used a new deduction task based on diagrammatic premises. We show that a premise can prime other premises that induce similar mental models in a way analogous to the case of words with related meanings, which prime one another. We present three experiments. In Experiment 1 we used an evaluation task. In Experiment 2, a construction task was used. The priming effect was obtained in both cases. In a third experiment we show that the priming effect was still present when partcipants were instructed to ignore a prime displayed before the premises. In all three experiments we compared determinate and indeterminate problems and found faster responses in the former.
Moreno-Ríos
Sergio
S
Departamento de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain. semoreno@ugr.es
García-Madruga
Juan A
JA
D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes; D011930:Reaction Time; D013028:Space Perception