Students taught fallacy detection by inductive drill on concrete examples decided argument validity more accurately than students taught by the regular deductive logic course¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r1 · q2
Currency · newest study 1913 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? The inductively tutored group averaged 42 correct validity decisions out of 45 test examples versus 35.3 for the class-taught group, and no class-taught observer matched the poorest tutored observer. → Felix Sachs 1913

Evidence¶

Felix Sachs 1913¶

Felix Sachs. (1913). Preliminary Study of the Relative Efficiency of Inductive and Deductive Teaching of Logical Reasoning. The Journal of Educational Psychology. https://www.jstor.org/journal/jeducpsyc

q2 · i? · causal · r1

Comparison of two small groups on the same 45 concrete test examples: three tutored observers (about 20 hours of inductive drill) versus six class-taught observers. The summarized table shows tutored averages of 42 right versus 3 wrong, class-taught 35.3 right versus 9.5 wrong. The article prints no effect size.

"The table shows clearly enough that the decision as to the validity of the arguments was not very difficult, nevertheless there is a clear superiority of the inductively taught group; in fact, no one of the class-taught observers does so well as the poorest of the tutored group."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• The inductively tutored group gave distinctly better-quality explanations of the fallacies they detected than the class-taught group — related
• Inductively trained observers carried their learned fallacy patterns over to new material, deciding correctly on every one of 47 additional untabulated test examples — related
• The tutored and class-taught groups showed no meaningful difference in time taken per test example — related
• Majorities of students believed inductive instruction more effective for simple structures and, conversely, for difficult structures — related