An Empirical Study of Diagrammatic Inference Process by Recording the Moving Operation of Diagrams

Abstract

In this study, we investigate how people manipulate diagrams in logical reasoning, especially no valid conclusion (NVC) tasks. In NVC tasks, premises are given and people are asked to judge whether “no consequence can be drawn from the premises.” Here, we introduce a method of asking participants to directly manipulate instances of diagrammatic objects as a component of inferential processes. We observed how participants move Euler diagrams, presented on a PC monitor, to solve syllogisms with universally quantified sentences. In the NVC tasks, 88.6% of our participants chose to use an enumeration strategy with multiple configurations of conclusion diagrams and/or a partial-overlapping strategy of placing two circles. Our results provide evidence that NVC judgment for tasks with diagrams can be reached using an efficient way of counter-example construction.