Thinking about Reasoning: Is Knowledge Power?

Thinking about Reasoning: Is Knowledge Power?

The capacity to reason through complex scenarios gives human beings incredible power to solve problems. What do we know about the reasoning processes that make this power possible? In the present article, we distinguish reasoning from problem solving, explore what we know currently about human reasoning, and identify some limitations with our current level of understanding. In particular, we focus on why theories of reasoning are unclear regarding the role of reasoning strategies. We suggest that reasoning strategies may have been obscured in the literature because "trained" individuals, who possess relevant knowledge about the reasoning task under study, are normally excluded from participating in the study. The consequence of excluding "trained" participants, or "experts," and only testing "un trained" participants, or "novices," is that reasoning performance might appear to be overly consistent, so consistent, in fact, that reasoning performance might mistakenly be attributed to a fundamental mechanism rather than to the operation of reasoning strategies. We conclude by suggesting that expertise should be incorporated as a moderator variable into theories of reasoning so as to delineate fully how individuals reason at different times with different levels of knowledge.