Model-Based Explanation of Feedback Effects in Syllogistic Reasoning

For decades, a significant number of models explaining human syllogistic inference processes were developed. There is profound work fitting the models' parameters and analyzing each model's ability to account for the data in order to support or reject the underlying theories. However, the model parameters are rarely used to extract explanations and hypotheses for phenomena that go beyond the original scope of the models. In this work, we apply three state-of-the-art models, the probability heuristics model (PHM), mReasoner, and TransSet, to data from reasoning experiments where participants received feedback for their conclusions. We derived hypotheses based on the models' explanations for the feedback effect and put these to the test by conducting an experiment targeting the hypotheses. The work contributes to the field in three ways: (a) the feedback effect could be replicated and was shown to be a robust effect; (b) we demonstrate the use of the model parameters in order to derive new hypotheses; (c) we present possible explanations for the feedback effect based on existing theories.