Uncovering iconic patterns of syllogistic reasoning: A clustering analysis

Syllogistic reasoning is one of the core domains of human reasoning research. Over its century of being actively researched, various theories have been proposed attempting to disentangle and explain the various strategies human reasoners are relying on. In this article we propose a data-driven approach to behaviorally cluster reasoners into archetypal groups based on non-negative matrix factorization. The identified clusters are interpreted in the context of state-of-the-art theories in the field and analyzed based on the posited key assumptions, e.g., the dual-processing account. We show interesting contradictions that add to a growing body of evidence suggesting shortcomings of the current state of the art in syllogistic reasoning research and discuss possibilities of overcoming them.