# Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience/Reasoning and Decision Making

No matter which public topic you discuss or which personal aspect you
worry about -- you need reasons for your opinion and argumentation.
Moreover, the ability of reasoning is responsible for your cognitive
features of decision making and choosing among alternatives.

Everyone of us uses these two abilities in everyday life to the utmost.
Let us, therefore, consider the following scene of Knut\'s life:

*"It is again a rainy afternoon in Osnabrück (Germany) and as Knut and
his wife are tired of observing the black crows in their garden they
decide to escape from the shabby weather and spend their holidays in
Spain. Knut has never been to Spain before and is pretty excited. They
will leave the next day, thus he is packing his bag. The crucial things
first: some underwear, some socks, a pair of pyjamas and his wash bag
with a toothbrush, shampoo, soap, sun milk and insect spray. But, Knut
cannot find the insect spray until his wife tells him that she lost it
and will buy some new. He advises her to take an umbrella for the way to
the chemist as it is raining outside, before he turns back to his
packing task. But what did he already pack into his bag? Immediately, he
remembers and continues, packing his clothing into the bag, considering
that each piece fits another one and finally his Ipod as he exclusively
listens to music with this device. Since the two of them are going on
summer holidays, Knut packs especially shorts and T-Shirts into his bag.
After approximately half an hour, he is finally convinced that he has
done everything necessary for having some fine holidays."*

With regard to this sketch of Knut\'s holiday preparation, we will
explain the basic principles of reasoning and decision making. In the
following, it will be shown how much cognitive work is necessary for
this fragment of everyday life. After presenting an insight into the
topic, we will illustrate what kind of brain lesions lead to what kind
of impairments of these two cognitive features.

## Reasoning

In a process of reasoning available information is taken into account in
form of premises "wikilink"). Through a
process of inferencing a conclusion
is reached on the base of these premises. The conclusion's content of
information goes beyond the one of the premises. To make this clear
consider the following consideration Knut makes before planning his
holiday:

` `**`1. Premise: In all countries in southern Europe it is pretty warm during summer.`**\
` `**`2. Premise: Spain is in southern Europe.`**\
` `**`Conclusion: Therefore, in Spain it is pretty warm during summer.`**

The conclusion in this example follows directly from the premises but it
entails information which is not explicitly stated in the premises. This
is a rather typical feature of a process of reasoning. In the following
it is decided between the two major kinds of reasoning, namely
**inductive** and **deductive** which are often seen as the complement
of one another.

### Deductive reasoning

Deductive reasoning is
concerned with syllogisms in which the
conclusion follows logically from the premises. The following example
about Knut makes this process clear:

` `**`1.Premise: Knut knows: If it is warm, one needs shorts and T-Shirts.`**\
` `**`2.Premise: He also knows that it is warm in Spain during summer.`**\
` `**`Conclusion: Therefore, Knut reasons that he needs shorts and T-Shirts in Spain.`**

In the given example it is obvious that the premises are about rather
general information and the resulting conclusion is about a more special
case which can be inferred from the two premises.

Hereafter it is differentiated between the two major kinds of
syllogisms, namely categorical and conditional ones.

#### Categorical syllogisms

In categorical syllogisms the statements of the premises begin typically
with "all", "none" or "some" and the conclusion starts with "therefore"
or "hence". These kinds of syllogisms fulfill the task of describing a
relationship between two categories. In the example given above in the
introduction of deductive reasoning these categories are *Spain* and
*the need for shorts and T-Shirts*. Two different approaches serve the
study of categorical syllogisms which are the **normative approach** and
the **descriptive approach**.

##### The normative approach

The normative approach is based on logic and deals with the problem of
categorizing conclusions as either valid or invalid. "Valid" means that
the conclusion follows logically from the premises whereas "invalid"
means the contrary. Two basic principles and a method called **Euler
Circles** (Figure 1) have been developed to help judging about the
validity. The first principle was
created by Aristotle and says "If the two premises are true, the
conclusion of a valid syllogism must be true" (cp. Goldstein, 2005). The
second principle describes that "The validity of a syllogism is
determined only by its form, not its content." These two principles
explain why the following syllogism is (surprisingly) valid:

` `**`All flowers are animals. All animals can jump. Therefore, all flowers can jump.`**

Even though it is quite obvious that the first premise is not true and
further that the conclusion is not true, the whole syllogism is still
valid. Applying formal logic to the syllogism in the example, the
conclusion is valid.

![](eulercircles.jpg "eulercircles.jpg"){width="500"}

*Figure 1, Euler Circles*

Due to this precondition it is possible to display a syllogism formally
with symbols or letters and explain its relationship graphically with
the help of diagrams. There are various ways to demonstrate a premise
graphically. Starting with a circle to represent the first premise and
adding one or more circles for the second one (Figure 1), the crucial
move is to compare the constructed diagrams with the conclusion. It
should be clearly laid out whether the diagrams are contradictory or
not. Agreeing with one another, the syllogism is valid. The displayed
syllogism (Figure 1) is obviously valid. The conclusion shows that
everything that can jump contains animals which again contains flowers.
This agrees with the two premises which point out that flowers are
animals and that these are able to jump. The method of Euler Circles is
a good device to make syllogisms better conceivable.

##### The descriptive approach

The descriptive approach is concerned with estimating people´s ability
of judging validity and explaining judging errors. This psychological
approach uses two methods in order to determine people\`s performance:

**`Method of evaluation`**`: People are given two premises, a conclusion and the task to judge whether the syllogism is valid or not.`\
`                      (preferred one)`\
**`Method of production`**`: Participants are supplied with two premises and asked to develop a logically valid conclusion.`\
`                      (if possible)`

While using the **method of evaluation** researchers found typical
misjudgments about syllogisms. Premises starting with "All", "Some" or
"No" imply a special atmosphere and influence a person in the process of
decision making. One mistake often occurring is judging a syllogism
incorrectly as valid, in which the two premises as well as the
conclusion starts with "All". The influence of the provided atmosphere
leads to the right decision at most times, but is definitely not
reliable and guides the person to a rash decision. This phenomenon is
called the **atmosphere effect**.

In addition to the form of a syllogism, the content is likely to
influence a person's decision as well and causes the person to neglect
his logical thinking. The belief
bias states that people tend to judge
syllogisms with believable conclusions as valid, while they tend to
judge syllogisms with unbelievable conclusions as invalid. Given a
conclusion as like "Some bananas are pink", hardly any participants
would judge the syllogism as valid, even though it might be valid
according to its premises (e.g. Some bananas are fruits. All fruits are
pink.)

##### Mental models of deductive reasoning

It is still not possible to consider what mental processes might occur
when people are trying to determine whether a syllogism is valid. After
researchers observed that Euler Circles can be used to determine the
validity of a syllogism, Phillip Johnson--Laird (1999) wondered whether
people would use such circles naturally without any instruction how to
use them. At the same time he found out that they do not work for some
more complex syllogisms and that a problem can be solved by applying
logical rules, but most people solve them by imagining the situation.
This is the basic idea of people using mental models -- a specific
situation that is represented in a person's mind that can be used to
help determine the validity of syllogisms -- to solve deductive
reasoning problems. The basic principle behind the Mental Model Theory
is: A conclusion is valid only if it cannot be refuted by any mode of
the premises. This theory is rather popular because it makes predictions
that can be tested and because it can be applied without any knowledge
about rules of logic. But there are still problems facing researchers
when trying to determine how people reason about syllogisms. These
problems include the fact that a variety of different strategies are
used by people in reasoning and that some people are better in solving
syllogisms than others.

##### Effects of culture on deductive reasoning

People can be influenced by the content of syllogisms rather than by
focusing on logic when judging their validity. Psychologists have
wondered whether people are influenced by their cultures when judging.
Therefore they have done cross--cultural experiments in which reasoning
problems were presented to people of different cultures. They observed
that people from different cultures judge differently to these problems.
People use evidence from their own experience (empirical evidence) and
ignore evidence presented in the syllogism (theoretical evidence).

#### Conditional syllogisms

Another type of syllogisms is called "conditional syllogism". Just like
the categorical one, it also has two premises and a conclusion. In
difference the first premise has the form "If ... then". Syllogisms like
this one are common in everyday life. Consider the following example
from the story about Knut:

` `**`` 1. Premise: If it is raining, Knut`s wife gets wet. ``**\
` `**`2. Premise: It is raining.`**\
` `**`` Conclusion: Therefore, Knut`s wife gets wet. ``**

Conditional syllogisms are typically given in the abstract form: "If p
then q", where "p" is called the **antecedent** and "q" the
**consequent**.

##### Forms of conditional syllogisms

There are four major forms of conditional syllogisms, namely **Modus
Ponens**, **Modus Tollens**, **Denying The Antecedent** and **Affirming
The Consequent**. These are illustrated in the table below (Figure 2) by
means of the conditional syllogism above (i.e. If it is raining, Knut\`s
wife gets wet). The table indicates the premises, the resulting
conclusions and it shows whether these are valid or not. The lowermost
row displays the relative number of correct judgements people make about
the validity of the conclusions.

+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+
|             | Modus       | Modus       | Denying the | Affirming   |
|             | Ponens      | Tollens     | Antecedent  | the         |
|             |             |             |             | Consequent  |
+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+
| Description | The         | The         | The         | The         |
|             | antecedent  | consequent  | antecedent  | antecedent  |
|             | of the      | of the      | of the      | of the      |
|             | first       | first       | first       | first       |
|             | premise is  | premise is  | premise is  | premise is  |
|             | affirmed in | negated in  | negated in  | affirmed in |
|             | the second  | the second  | the second  | the second  |
|             | premise.    | premise.    | premise.    | premise.    |
+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+
| Formal      | If P then   | If P then   | If P then   | If P then   |
|             | Q. P\       | Q. Not-Q\   | Q. Not-P\   | Q. Q\       |
|             | Therefore   | Therefore   | Therefore   | Therefore   |
|             | Q.          | Not-P.      | Not-Q.      | P.          |
+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+
| Example     | If it is    | If it is    | If it is    | If it is    |
|             | raining,    | raining,    | raining,    | raining,    |
|             | Knut\'s     | Knut\'s     | Knut\'s     | Knut\'s     |
|             | wife gets   | wife gets   | wife gets   | wife gets   |
|             | wet. It is  | wet.        | wet. It is  | wet.        |
|             | raining.\   | Knut\'s     | not         | Knut\'s     |
|             | Therefore   | wife does   | raining.\   | wife gets   |
|             | Knut\'s     | not get     | Therefore   | wet\        |
|             | wife gets   | wet.\       | Knut\'s     | Therefore   |
|             | wet         | Therefore   | wife does   | it is       |
|             |             | it is not   | not get     | raining.    |
|             |             | raining.    | wet.        |             |
+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+
| Validity    | !          | !          | ![{ | mark.svg"){ |
|             | heck.svg"){ | heck.svg"){ | width="14"} | width="14"} |
|             | width="14"} | width="14"} | INVALID     | INVALID     |
|             | VALID       | VALID       |             |             |
+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+
| Correct     | 97%         | 60%         | 40%         | 40%         |
| Judgements  | correctly   | correctly   | correctly   | correctly   |
|             | identify as | identify as | identify as | identify as |
|             | valid.      | valid.      | invalid.    | invalid.    |
+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+

: Figure 2, Different kinds of conditional syllogisms

Obviously, the validity of the syllogisms with valid conclusions is
easier to judge in a correct manner than the validity of the ones with
invalid conclusions. The conclusion in the instance of the modus ponens
is apparently valid. In the example it is very clear that Knut\`s wife
gets wet, if it is raining.

The validity of the modus tollens is more difficult to recognize.
Referring to the example, in the case that Knut\`s wife does not get wet
it can\`t be raining. Because the first premise says that if it is
raining, she gets wet. So the reason for Knut\`s wife not getting wet is
that it is not raining. Consequently, the conclusion is valid.

The validity of the remaining two kinds of conditional syllogisms is
judged correctly only by 40% of people. If the method of denying the
antecedent is applied, the second premise says that it is not raining.
But from this fact it follows not logically that Knut\`s wife does not
get wet -- obviously rain is not the only reason for her to get wet. It
could also be the case that the sun is shining and Knut tests his new
water pistol and makes her wet. So, this kind of conditional syllogism
does not lead to a valid conclusion.

Affirming the consequent in the case of the given example means that the
second premise says that Knut\`s wife gets wet. But again the reason for
this can be circumstances apart from rain. So, it follows not logically
that it is raining. In consequence, the conclusion of this syllogism is
invalid.

The four kinds of syllogisms have shown that it is not always easy to
make correct judgments concerning the validity of the conclusions. The
following passages will deal with other errors people make during the
process of conditional reasoning.

##### The Wason Selection Task

The Wason Selection Task is a
famous experiment which shows that people make more errors in the
process of reasoning, if it is concerned with abstract items than if it
involves real-world items (Wason, 1966).

In the abstract version of the Wason Selection Task four cards are shown
to the participants with each a letter on one side and a number on the
other (Figure 3, yellow cards). The task is to indicate the minimum
number of cards that have to be turned over to test whether the
following rule is observed: "If there is a vowel on one side then there
is an even number on the other side". 53% of participants selected the
'E' card which is correct, because turning this card over is necessary
for testing the truth of the rule. However still another card needs to
be turned over. 64% indicated that the '4' card has to be turned over
which is not right. Only 4% of participants answered correctly that the
'7' card needs to be turned over in addition to the 'E'. The correctness
of turning over these two cards becomes more obvious if the same task is
stated in terms of real-world items instead of vowels and numbers. One
of the experiments for determining this was the beer/drinking-age
problem used by Richard Griggs and James Cox (1982). This experiment is
identical to the Wason Selection Task except that instead of numbers and
letters on the cards everyday terms (beer, soda and ages) were used
(Figure 3, green cards). Griggs and Cox gave the following rule to the
participants: "If a person is drinking beer then he or she must be older
than 19 years." In this case 73% of participants answered in a correct
way, namely that the cards with "Beer" and "14 years" on it have to be
turned over to test whether the rule is kept.

!*Figure 3, The Wason Selection
Task*{width="400"}

**Why is the performance better in the case of real--world items?**

There are two different approaches which explain why participants'
performance is significantly better in the case of the beer/drinking-age
problem than in the abstract version of the Wason Selection Task, namely
one approach concerning permission schemas and an evolutionary approach.

The regulation: "If one is 19 years or older then he/she is allowed to
drink alcohol", is known by everyone as an experience from everyday life
(also called **permission schema**). As this permission schema is
already learned by the participants it can be applied to the Wason
Selection Task for real--world items to improve participants\`
performance. On the contrary such a permission schema from everyday life
does not exist for the abstract version of the Wason Selection Task.

The evolutionary approach concerns the important human ability of
**cheater-detection** . This approach states that an important aspect of
human behaviour especially in the past was/is the ability for two
persons to cooperate in a way that is beneficial for both of them. As
long as each person receives a benefit for whatever he/she does in
favour of the other one, everything works well in their social exchange.
But if someone cheats and receives benefit from others without giving it
back, some problem arises (see also chapter Cognitive Psychology and
Cognitive Neuroscience/Evolutionary Perspective on Social Cognitions#3.
Evolutionary Perspective on Social
Cognitions).
It is assumed that the property to detect cheaters has become a part of
human\`s cognitive makeup during evolution. This cognitive ability
improves the performance in the beer/drinking-age version of the Wason
Selection Task as it allows people to detect a cheating person who does
not behave according to the rule. Cheater-detection does not work in the
case of the abstract version of the Wason Selection Task as vowels and
numbers do not behave or even cheat at all as opposed to human beings.

### Inductive reasoning

In the previous sections deductive reasoning was discussed, reaching
conclusions based on logical rules applied to a set of premises.
However, many problems cannot be represented in a way that would make it
possible to use these rules to get a conclusion. This subchapter is
about a way to be able to decide in terms of these problems as well:
inductive reasoning.

!*Figure 4, Deductive and inductive
reasoning*{width="300"}

Inductive reasoning is the process of making simple observations of a
certain kind and applying these observations via generalization to a
different problem to make a decision. Hence one infers from a special
case to the general principle which is just the opposite of the
procedure of deductive reasoning (Figure 4). A good example for
inductive reasoning is the following:

` `**`Premise: All crows Knut and his wife have ever seen are black.`**\
` `**`Conclusion: Therefore, they reason that all crows on earth are black.`**

In this example it is obvious that Knut and his wife infer from the
simple observation about the crows they have seen to the general
principle about all crows. Considering figure 5 this means that they
infer from the subset (yellow circle) to the whole (blue circle). As in
this example it is typical in a process of inductive reasoning that the
premises are believed to support the conclusion, but do not ensure it.

![{width="300"}

*Figure 5*

#### Forms of inductive reasoning

The two different forms of inductive reasoning are \"**strong**\" and
\"**weak**\" induction. The former describes that the truth of the
conclusion is very likely, if the assumed premises are true. An example
for this form of reasoning is the one given in the previous section. In
this case it is obvious that the premise (\"All crows Knut and his wife
have ever seen are black\") gives good evidence for the conclusion
(\"All crows on earth are black\") to be true. But nevertheless it is
still possible, although very unlikely, that not all crows are black.

On the contrary, conclusions reached by \"weak induction\" are supported
by the premises in a rather weak manner. In this approach the truth of
the premises makes the truth of the conclusion possible, but not likely.
An example for this kind of reasoning is the following:

` `**`Premise: Knut always hears music with his IPod.`**\
` `**`Conclusion: Therefore, he reasons that all music is only heard with IPods.`**

In this instance the conclusion is obviously false. The information the
premise contains is not very representative and although it is true, it
does not give decisive evidence for the truth of the conclusion.

To sum it up, strong inductive reasoning gets to conclusions which are
very probable whereas the conclusions reached through weak inductive
reasoning on the base of the premises are unlikely to be true.

#### Reliability of conclusions

If the strength of the conclusion of an inductive argument has to be
determined, three factors concerning the premises play a decisive role.
The following example which refers to Knut and his wife and the
observations they made about the crows (see previous sections) displays
these factors:

When Knut and his wife observe in addition to the black crows in Germany
also the crows in Spain, the **number of observations** they make
concerning the crows obviously increases. Furthermore, the
**representativeness of these observations** is supported, if Knut and
his wife observe the crows at all different day- and nighttimes and see
that they are black every time. Theoretically it may be that the crows
change their colour at night what would make the conclusion that all
crows are black wrong. The **quality of the evidence** for all crows to
be black increases, if Knut and his wife add scientific measurements
which support the conclusion. For example they could find out that the
crows\' genes determine that the only colour they can have is black.

Conclusions reached through a process of inductive reasoning are never
definitely true as no one has seen all crows on earth and as it is
possible, although very unlikely, that there is a green or brown
exemplar. The three mentioned factors contribute decisively to the
strength of an inductive argument. So, the stronger these factors are,
the more reliable are the conclusions reached through induction.

#### Processes and constraints

In a process of inductive reasoning people often make use of certain
heuristics which lead in many cases quickly to adequate conclusions but
sometimes may cause errors. In the following, two of these heuristics
(**availability heuristic** and **representativeness heuristic**) are
explained. Subsequently, the **confirmation bias** is introduced which
sometimes influences people\'s reasons according to their own opinion
without them realising it.

**The availability heuristic**

Things that are more easily remembered are judged to be more prevalent.
An example for this is an experiment done by Lichtenstein et al. (1978).
The participants were asked to choose from two different lists the
causes of death which occur more often. Because of the availability
heuristic people judged more "spectacular" causes like homicide or
tornado to cause more deaths than others, like asthma. The reason for
the subjects answering in such a way is that for example films and news
in television are very often about spectacular and interesting causes of
death. This is why these information are much more available to the
subjects in the experiment.

Another effect of the usage of the availability heuristic is called
**illusory correlations**. People tend to judge according to
stereotypes. It seems to them that there are correlations between
certain events which in reality do not exist. This is what is known by
the term "prejudice". It means that a much oversimplified generalization
about a group of people is made. Usually a correlation seems to exist
between negative features and a certain class of people (often fringe
groups). If, for example, one\'s neighbour is jobless and very lazy one
tends to correlate these two attributes and to create the prejudice that
all jobless people are lazy. This illusory correlation occurs because
one takes into account information which is available and judges this to
be prevalent in many cases.

**The representativeness heuristic**

If people have to judge the probability of an event they try to find a
comparable event and assume that the two events have a similar
probability. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1974) presented the
following task to their participants in an experiment: "We randomly
chose a man from the population of the U.S., Robert, who wears glasses,
speaks quietly and reads a lot. Is it more likely that he is a librarian
or a farmer?" More of the participants answered that Robert is a
librarian which is an effect of the representativeness heuristic. The
comparable event which the participants chose was the one of a typical
librarian as Robert with his attributes of speaking quietly and wearing
glasses resembles this event more than the event of a typical farmer.
So, the event of a typical librarian is better comparable with Robert
than the event of a typical farmer. Of course this effect may lead to
errors as Robert is randomly chosen from the population and as it is
perfectly possible that he is a farmer although he speaks quietly and
wears glasses. !*Figure 6, Feminist bank
tellers*{width="500"}
The representativeness heuristic also leads to errors in reasoning in
cases where the **conjunction rule** is violated. This rule states that
the conjunction of two events is never more likely to be the case than
the single events alone. An example for this is the case of the feminist
bank teller (Tversky & Kahneman, 1983). If we are introduced to a woman
of whom we know that she is very interested in women's rights and has
participated in many political activities in college and we are to
decide whether it is more likely that she is a bank teller or a feminist
bank teller, we are drawn to conclude the latter as the facts we have
learnt about her resemble the event of a feminist bank teller more than
the event of only being a bank teller.

But it is in fact much more likely that somebody is just a bank teller
than it is that someone is a feminist in addition to being a bank
teller. This effect is illustrated in figure 6 where the green square,
which stands for just being a bank teller, is much larger and thus more
probable than the smaller violet square, which displays the conjunction
of bank tellers and feminists, which is a subset of bank tellers.

**Confirmation bias**

This phenomenon describes the fact that people tend to decide in terms
of what they themselves believe to be true or good. If, for example,
someone believes that one has bad luck on Friday the thirteenth, he will
especially look for every negative happening at this particular date but
will be inattentive to negative happenings on other days. This behaviour
strengthens the belief that there exists a relationship between Friday
the thirteenth and having bad luck. This example shows that the actual
information is not taken into account to come to a conclusion but only
the information which supports one\'s own belief. This effect leads to
errors as people tend to reason in a subjective manner, if personal
interests and beliefs are involved.

All the mentioned factors influence the subjective probability of an
event so that it differs from the actual probability (**probability
heuristic**). Of course all of these factors do not always appear alone,
but they influence one another and can occur in combination during the
process of reasoning.

#### Why inductive reasoning at all?

All the described constraints show how prone to errors inductive
reasoning is and so the question arises, why we use it at all?

But inductive reasons are important nevertheless because they act as
shortcuts for our reasoning. It is much easier and faster to apply the
availability heuristic or the representativeness heuristic to a problem
than to take into account all information concerning the current topic
and draw a conclusion by using logical rules.

In the following excerpt of very usual actions there is a lot of
inductive reasoning involved although one does not realize it on the
first view. It points out the importance of this cognitive ability:

*The sunrise every morning and the sunset in the evening, the change of
seasons, the TV program, the fact that a chair does not collapse when we
sit on it or the light bulb that flashes after we have pushed a button.*

All of these cases are conclusions derived from processes of inductive
reasoning. Accordingly, one assumes that the chair one is sitting on
does not collapse as the chairs on which one sat before did not
collapse. This does not ensure that the chair does not break into pieces
but nevertheless it is a rather helpful conclusion to assume that the
chair remains stable as this is very probable. To sum it up, inductive
reasoning is rather advantageous in situations where deductive reasoning
is just not applicable because only evidence but no proved facts are
available. As these situations occur rather often in everyday life,
living without the use of inductive reasoning is inconceivable.

**Induction vs. deduction**

The table below (Figure 7) summarises the most prevalent properties and
differences between deductive and inductive reasoning which are
important to keep in mind.

  ------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
               Deductive Reasoning                                                                                                                           Inductive Reasoning
  Premises     Stated as *facts* or general principles (\"It is warm in the Summer in Spain.\")                                                              Based on *observations* of specific cases (\"All crows Knut and his wife have seen are black.\")
  Conclusion   Conclusion is more *special* than the information the premises provide. It is reached directly by applying *logical rules* to the premises.   Conclusion is more *general* than the information the premises provide. It is reached by *generalizing* the premises\' information.
  Validity     If the premises are true, the conclusion *must be true*.                                                                                      If the premises are true, the conclusion *is probably true*.
  Usage        More difficult to use (mainly in logical problems). One needs *facts* which are definitely true.                                              Used often in everyday life (fast and easy). *Evidence* is used instead of proved facts.
  ------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  : Figure 7, Induction vs. deduction

## Decision making

According to the different levels of consequences, each process of
making a decision requires appropriate effort and various aspects to be
considered. The following excerpt from the story about Knut makes this
obvious: "After considering facts like the warm weather in Spain and
shirts and shorts being much more comfortable in this case (information
gathering and likelihood estimation) Knut reasons that he needs them for
his vacation. In consequence, he finally makes the decision to pack
mainly shirts and shorts in his bag (final act of choosing)." Now it
seems like there cannot be any decision making without previous
reasoning, but that is not true. Of course there are situations in which
someone decides to do something spontaneously, with no time to reason
about it. We will not go into detail here but you might think about
questions like *\"Why do we choose one or another option in that
case?\"*

### Choosing among alternatives

The psychological process of decision
making constantly goes along
with situations in daily life. Thinking about Knut again we can imagine
him to decide between packing more blue or more green shirts for his
vacation (which would only have minor consequences) but also about
applying a specific job or having children with his wife (which would
have relevant influence on important circumstances of his future life).
The mentioned examples are both characterized by personal decisions,
whereas professional decisions, dealing for example with economic or
political issues, are just as important.

#### The utility approach

!*Figure 8, Relation between (monetary) gains/losses and their
subjective value according to Prospect
Theory* gains/losses and their subjective value according to Prospect Theory")

There are three different ways to analyze decision making. The normative
approach assumes a rational decision-maker with well-defined
preferences. While the rational choice theory is based on a priori
considerations, the descriptive approach is based on empirical
observations and on experimental studies of choice behavior. The
prescriptive enterprise develops methods in order to improve decision
making. According to Manktelow and Reber´s definition, "utility refers
to outcomes that are desirable because they are in the person's best
interest" (Reber, A. S., 1995; Manktelow, K., 1999). This
normative/descriptive approach characterizes optimal decision making by
the maximum expected utility in terms of monetary value. This approach
can be helpful in gambling theories, but simultaneously includes several
disadvantages. People do not necessarily focus on the monetary payoff,
since they find value in things other than money, such as fun, free
time, family, health and others. But that is not a big problem, because
it is possible to apply the graph (Figure 8), which shows the relation
between (monetary) gains/losses and their subjective value / utility,
which is equal to all the valuable things mentioned above. Therefore,
not choosing the maximal monetary value does not automatically describe
an irrational decision process.

#### Misleading effects

But even respecting the considerations above there might still be
problems to make the "right" decision because of different misleading
effects, which mainly arise because of the constraints of inductive
reasoning. In general this means that our model of a situation/problem
might not be ideal to solve it in an optimal way. The following three
points are typical examples for such effects.

**Subjective models**

This effect is rather equal to the illusory correlations mentioned
before in the part about the constraints of inductive reasoning. It is
about the problem that models which people create might be misleading,
since they rely on subjective speculations. An example could be deciding
where to move by considering typical prejudices of the countries (e.g.
always good pizza, nice weather and a relaxed life-style in Italy in
contrast to some kind of boring food and steady rain in Great Britain).
The predicted events are not equal to the events occurring indeed.
(Kahneman & Tversky, 1982; Dunning & Parpal, 1989)

**Focusing illusion**

Another misleading effect is the so-called **focusing illusion**. By
considering only the most obvious aspects in order to make a certain
decision (e.g. the weather) people often neglect various really
important outcomes (e.g. circumstances at work). This effect occurs more
often, if people judge about others compared with judgments about their
own living.

**Framing effect**

A problem can be described in different ways and therefore evoke
different decision strategies. If a problem is specified in terms of
gains, people tend to use a risk-aversion strategy, while a problem
description in terms of losses leads to apply a risk-taking strategy. An
example of the same problem and predictably different choices is the
following experiment: A group of people is asked to imagine themselves
\$300 richer than they are, is confronted with the choice of a sure gain
of \$100 or an equal chance to gain \$200 or nothing. Most people avoid
the risk and take the sure gain, which means they take the risk-aversion
strategy. Alternatively if people are asked to assume themselves to be
\$500 richer than in reality, given the options of a sure loss of \$100
or an equal chance to lose \$200 or nothing, the majority opts for the
risk of losing \$200 by taking the risk seeking or risk-taking strategy.
This phenomenon is known as **framing effect** and can also be
illustrated by figure 8 above, which is a concave function for gains and
a convex one for losses. (*Foundations of Cognitive Psychology*,
Levitin, D. J., 2002)

#### Justification in decision making

Decision making often includes the need to assign a reason for the
decision and therefore justify it. This factor is illustrated by an
experiment by A. Tversky and E. Shafir (1992): A very attractive
vacation package has been offered to a group of students who have just
passed an exam and to another group of students who have just failed the
exam and have the chance to rewrite it after the holidays coming up. All
students have the options to buy the ticket straight away, to stay at
home, or to pay \$5 for keeping the option open to buy it later. At this
point, there is no difference between the two groups, since the number
of students who passed the exam and decided to book the flight (with the
justification of a deserving a reward), is the same as the number of
students who failed and booked the flight (justified as consolation and
having time for reoccupation). A third group of students who were
informed to receive their results in two more days was confronted with
the same problem. The majority decided to pay \$5 and keep the option
open until they would get their results. The conclusion now is that even
though the actual exam result does not influence the decision, it is
required in order to provide a rationale.

### Executive functions

!*Figure 9, Left frontal
lobe*{width="350"}

Subsequently, the question arises how this cognitive ability of making
decisions is realized in the human brain. As we already know that there
are a couple of different tasks involved in the whole process, there has
to be something that coordinates and controls those brain activities --
namely the **executive functions**. They are the brain\'s conductor,
instructing other brain regions to perform, or be silenced, and
generally coordinating their synchronized activity (Goldberg, 2001).
Thus, they are responsible for optimizing the performance of all
"multi-threaded" cognitive tasks.

Locating those executive functions is rather difficult, as they cannot
be appointed to a single brain region. Traditionally, they have been
equated with the frontal lobes, or rather the prefrontal regions of the
frontal lobes; but it is still an open question whether all of their
aspects can be associated with these regions.

Nevertheless, we will concentrate on the prefrontal regions of the
frontal lobes, to get an impression of the important role of the
executive functions within cognition. Moreover, it is possible to
subdivide these regions into functional parts. But it is to be noted
that not all researchers regard the prefrontal cortex as containing
functionally different regions.

#### Executive functions in practice

According to Norman and Shallice, there are five types of situations in
which executive functions may be needed in order to optimize
performance, as the automatic activation of behaviour would be
insufficient. These are situations involving\...

**1. \...planning or decision making.**

**2. \...error correction or trouble shooting.**

**3. \...responses containing novel sequences of actions.**

**4. \...technical difficulties or dangerous circumstances.**

**5. \...the control of action or the overcoming of strong habitual
responses.**

The following parts will have a closer look to each of these points,
mainly referring to brain-damaged individuals.

Surprisingly, intelligence in general is not affected in cases of
frontal lobe injuries (Warrington, James & Maciejewski, 1986). However,
dividing intelligence into **crystallised intelligence** (based on
previously acquired knowledge) and **fluid intelligence** (meant to rely
on the current ability of solving problems), emphasizes the executive
power of the frontal lobes, as patients with lesions in these regions
performed significantly worse in tests of fluid intelligence (Duncan,
Burgess & Emslie, 1995).

**1. _Planning or decision making_**

**Impairments in abstract and conceptual thinking**

To solve many tasks it is important that one is able to use given
information. In many cases, this means that material has to be processed
in an abstract rather than in a concrete manner. Patients with executive
dysfunction have abstraction difficulties. This is proven by a card
sorting experiment (Delis et al., 1992):

The cards show names of animals and black or white triangles placed
above or below the word. Again, the cards can be sorted with attention
to different attributes of the animals (living on land or in water,
domestic or dangerous, large or small) or the triangles (black or white,
above or below word). People with frontal lobe damage fail to solve the
task because they cannot even conceptualize the properties of the
animals or the triangles, thus are not able to deduce a sorting-rule for
the cards (in contrast, there are some individuals only perseverating;
they find a sorting-criterion, but are unable to switch to a new one).

These problems might be due to a general difficulty in strategy
formation.

**Goal directed behavior**

Let us again take Knut into account to get an insight into the field of
goal directed behaviour -- in principle, this is nothing but problem
solving since it is about organizing behavior towards a goal. Thus, when
Knut is packing his bag for his holiday, he obviously has a goal in mind
(in other words: He wants to solve a problem) -- namely get ready before
the plane starts. There are several steps necessary during the process
of reaching a certain goal:

_Goal must be kept in mind_

Knut should never forget that he has to pack his bag in time.

_Dividing into subtasks and sequencing_

Knut packs his bag in a structured way. He starts packing the crucial
things and then goes on with rest.

_Completed portions must be kept in mind_

If Knut already packed enough underwear into his bag, he would not need
to search for more.

_Flexibility and adaptability_

Imagine that Knut wants to pack his favourite T-Shirt, but he realizes
that it is dirty. In this case, Knut has to adapt to this situation and
has to pick another T-Shirt that was not in his plan originally.

_Evaluation of actions_

Along the way of reaching his ultimate goal Knut constantly has to
evaluate his performance in terms of 'How am I doing considering that I
have the goal of packing my bag?'.

**Executive dysfunction and goal directed behavior**

The breakdown of executive functions impairs goal directed behavior to a
large extend. In which way cannot be stated in general, it depends on
the specific brain regions that are damaged. So it is quite possible
that an individual with a particular lesion has problems with two or
three of the five points described above and performs within average
regions when the other abilities are tested. However, if only one link
is missing from the chain, the whole plan might get very hard or even
impossible to master. Furthermore, the particular hemisphere affected
plays a role as well.

Another interesting result was the fact that lesions in the frontal
lobes of left and right hemisphere impaired different abilities. While a
lesion in the right hemisphere caused trouble in making recency
judgements, a lesion in the left hemisphere impaired the patient's
performance only when the presented material was verbal or in a
variation of the experiment that required self-ordered sequencing.
Because of that we know that the ability to sequence behaviour is not
only located in the frontal lobe but in the left hemisphere particularly
when it comes to motor action.

**Problems in sequencing**

In an experiment by Milner (1982), people were shown a sequence of cards
with pictures. The experiment included two different tasks: recognition
trials and recency trials. In the former the patients were shown two
different pictures, one of them has appeared in the sequence before, and
the participants had to decide which one it was. In the latter they were
shown two different pictures, both of them have appeared before, they
had to name the picture that was shown more recently than the other one.
The results of this experiment showed that people with lesions in
temporal regions have more trouble with the recognition trial and
patients with frontal lesions have difficulties with the recency trial
since anterior regions are important for sequencing. This is due to the
fact that the recognition trial demanded a properly functioning
recognition
memory,
the recency trial a properly functioning memory for item
order.
These two are dissociable and seem to be processed in different areas of
the brain.

The frontal lobe is not only important for sequencing but also thought
to play a major role for working
memory.
This idea is supported by the fact that lesions in the lateral regions
of the frontal lobe are much more likely to impair the ability of
\'keeping things in mind\' than damage to other areas of the frontal
cortex do.

But this is not the only thing there is to sequencing. For reaching a
goal in the best possible way it is important that a person is able to
figure out which sequence of actions, which strategy, best suits the
purpose, in addition to just being able to develop a correct sequence.
This is proven by an experiment called \'Tower of London\' (Shallice,
1982) which is similar to the famous \'Tower of
Hanoi\'
task with the difference that this task required three balls to be put
onto three poles of different length so that one pole could hold three
balls, the second one two and the third one only one ball, in a way that
a changeable goal position is attained out of a fixed initial position
in as few moves as possible. Especially patients with damage to the left
frontal lobe proved to work inefficiently and ineffectively on this
task. They needed many moves and engaged in actions that did not lead
toward the goal.

**Problems with the interpretation of available information**

Quite often, if we want to reach a goal, we get hints on how to do it
best. This means we have to be able to interpret the available
information in terms of what the appropriate strategy would be. For many
patients of executive dysfunction this is not an easy thing to do
either. They have trouble to use this information and engage in
inefficient actions. Thus, it will take them much longer to solve a task
than healthy people who use the extra information and develop an
effective strategy.

**Problems with self-criticism and -monitoring**

The last problem for people with frontal lobe damage we want to present
here is the last point in the above list of properties important for
proper goal directed behavior. It is the ability to evaluate one\'s
actions, an ability that is missing in most patients. These people are
therefore very likely to \'wander off task\' and engage in behavior that
does not help them to attain their goal. In addition to that, they are
also not able to determine whether their task is already completed at
all. Reasons for this are thought to be a lack of motivation or lack of
concern about one\'s performance (frontal lobe damage is usually
accompanied by changes in emotional processing) but these are probably
not the only explanations for these problems.

Another important brain region in this context -- the medial portion of
the frontal lobe -- is responsible for detecting behavioral errors made
while working towards a goal. This has been shown by ERP
experiments
where there was an error-related negativity 100ms after an error has
been made. If this area is damaged, this mechanism cannot work properly
any more and the patient loses the ability to detect errors and thus
monitor his own behavior.

However, in the end we must add that although executive dysfunction
causes an enormous number of problems in behaving correctly towards a
goal, most patients when assigned with a task are indeed anxious to
solve it but are just unable to do so.

**2. _Error correction and trouble shooting_**

!*Figure 10, Example for the WCST: Cards sorted according to shape (a),
number (b) or color (c) of the
objects*, number (b) or color (c) of the objects"){width="350"}

The most famous experiment to investigate error correction and trouble
shooting is the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). A participant is
presented with cards that show certain objects. These cards are defined
by shape, color and number of the objects on the cards. These cards now
have to be sorted according to a rule based on one of these three
criteria. The participant does not know which rule is the right one but
has to reach the conclusion after positive or negative feedback of the
experimenter. Then at some point, after the participant has found the
correct rule to sort the cards, the experimenter changes the rule and
the previous correct sorting will lead to negative feedback. The
participant has to realize the change and adapt to it by sorting the
cards according to the new rule.

Patients with executive dysfunction have problems identifying the rule
in the first place. It takes them noticeably longer because they have
trouble using already given information to make a conclusion. But once
they got to sorting correctly and the rule changes, they keep sorting
the cards according to the old rule although many of them notice the
negative feedback. They are just not able to switch to another
sorting-principle, or at least they need many tries to learn the new
one. They **perseverate**.

**Problems in shifting and modifying strategies**

Intact neuronal tissue in the frontal lobe is also crucial for another
executive function connected with goal directed behavior that we
described above: Flexibility and adaptability. This means that persons
with frontal lobe damage will have difficulties in shifting their way of
thinking -- meaning creating a new plan after recognizing that the
original one cannot be carried out for some reason. Thus, they are not
able to modify their strategy according to this new problem. Even when
it is clear that one hypothesis cannot be the right one to solve a task,
patients will stick to it nevertheless and are unable to abandon it
(called \'tunnel vision\').

Moreover, such persons do not use as many appropriate hypotheses for
creating a strategy as people with damage to other brain regions do. In
what particular way this can be observed in patients can again not be
stated in general but depends on the nature of the shift that has to be
made.

These earlier described problems of \'redirecting\' of one\'s strategies
stand in contrast to the actual \'act of switching\' between tasks. This
is yet another problem for patients with frontal lobe damage. Since the
control system that leads task switching as such is independent from the
parts that actually perform these tasks, the task switching is
particularly impaired in patients with lesions to the dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex while at the same time they have no trouble with
performing the single tasks alone. This of course, causes a lot of
problems in goal directed behavior because as it was said before: Most
tasks consist of smaller subtasks that have to be completed.

**3. _Responses containing novel sequences of
actions_**

Many clinical tests have been done, requiring patients to develop
strategies for dealing with novel situations. In the Cognitive
Estimation Task (Shallice & Evans, 1978) patients are presented with
questions whose answers are unlikely to be known. People with damage to
the prefrontal cortex have major difficulties to produce estimates for
questions like: "How many camels are in Holland?".

In the FAS Test (Miller, 1984) subjects have to generate sequences of
words (not proper names) beginning with a certain letter ("F" , "A" or
"S") in a one-minute period. This test involves developing new
strategies, selecting between alternatives and avoiding repeating
previous given answers. Patients with left lateral prefrontal lesions
are often impaired (Stuss et al., 1998).

**4. _Technical difficulties or dangerous
circumstances_**

One single mistake in a dangerous situation may easily lead to serious
injuries while a mistake in a technical difficult situation (e.g.
building a house of cards) would obviously lead to failure. Thus, in
such situations, automatic activation of responses clearly would be
insufficient and executive functions seem to be the only solution for
such problems.

Wilkins, Shallice and McCarthy (1987) were able to prove a connection
between dangerous or difficult situations and the prefrontal cortex, as
patients with lesions to this area were impaired during experiments
concerning dangerous or difficult situations. The ventromedial and
orbitofrontal cortex may be particularly important for these aspects of
executive functions.

**5. _Control of action or the overcoming of strong habitual
responses_**

**Deficits in initiation, cessation and control of action**

We start by describing the effects of the loss of the ability to start
something, to initiate an action. A person with executive dysfunction is
likely to have trouble beginning to work on a task without strong help
from the outside, while people with left frontal lobe damage often show
impaired spontaneous speech and people with right frontal lobe damage
rather show poor nonverbal fluency. Of course, one reason is the fact
that this person will not have any intention, desire or concern on his
or her own of solving the task since this is yet another characteristic
of executive dysfunction. But it is also due to a psychological effect
often connected with the loss of properly executive functioning:
Psychological inertia. Like in physics, inertia in this case means that
an action is very hard to initiate, but once started, it is again very
hard to shift or stop. This phenomenon is characterized by engagement in
repetitive behavior, is called perseveration (cp.
WCST).

Another problem caused by executive dysfunction can be observed in
patients suffering from the so called **environmental dependency
syndrome**. Their actions are impelled or obligated by their physical or
social environment. This manifests itself in many different ways and
depends to a large extent on the individual's personal history. Examples
are patients who begin to type when they see a computer key board, who
start washing the dishes upon seeing a dirty kitchen or who hang up
pictures on the walls when finding hammer, nails and pictures on the
floor. This makes these people appear as if they were acting impulsively
or as if they have lost their 'free will'. It shows a lack of control
for their actions. This is due to the fact that an impairment in their
executive functions causes a disconnection between thought and action.
These patients know that their actions are inappropriate but like in the
WCST, they cannot control what they are doing. Even if they are told by
which attribute to sort the cards, they will still keep sorting them
sticking to the old rule due to major difficulties in the translation of
these directions into action.

What is needed to avoid problems like these are the abilities to start,
stop or change an action but very likely also the ability to use
information to direct behavior.

#### Deficits in cognitive estimation

Next to the difficulties to produce estimates to questions whose answers
are unlikely known, patients with lesions to the frontal lobes have
problems with cognitive estimation in general.

Cognitive estimation is the ability to use known information to make
reasonable judgments or deductions about the world. Now the inability
for cognitive estimation is the third type of deficits often observed in
individuals with executive dysfunction. It is already known that people
with executive dysfunction have a relatively unaffected knowledge base.
This means they cannot retain knowledge about information or at least
they are unable to make inferences based on it. There are various
effects which are shown on such individuals. Now for example patients
with frontal lobe damage have difficulty estimating the length of the
spine of an average woman. Making such realistic estimations requires
inferencing based on other knowledge which is in this case, knowing that
the height of the average woman is about 5 ft 6 in (168 cm) and
considering that the spine runs about one third to one half the length
of the body and so on. Patients with such a dysfunction do not only have
difficulties in their estimates of cognitive information but also in
their estimates of their own capacities (such as their ability to direct
activity in goal -- oriented manner or in controlling their emotions).
Prigatuno, Altman and O'Brien (1990) reported that when patients with
anterior lesions associated with diffuse axonal injury to other brain
areas are asked how capable they are of performing tasks such as
scheduling their daily activities or preventing their emotions from
affecting daily activities, they grossly overestimate their abilities.
From several experiments Smith and Miler (1988) found out that
individuals with frontal lobe damages have no difficulties in
determining whether an item was in a specific inspection series they
find it difficult to estimate how frequently an item did occur. This may
not only reflect difficulties in cognitive estimation but also in memory
task that place a premium on remembering temporal information. Thus both
difficulties (in cognitive estimation and in temporal sequencing) may
contribute to a reduced ability to estimate frequency of occurrence.

Despite these impairments in some domains the abilities of estimation
are preserved in patients with frontal lobe damage. Such patients also
do have problems in estimating how well they can prevent their emotions
for affecting their daily activities. They are also as good at judging
how many dues they will need to solve a puzzle as patients with temporal
lobe damage or neurologically intact people.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

#### Theories of frontal lobe function in executive control

In order to explain that patients with frontal lobe damage have
difficulties in performing executive functions, four major approaches
have developed. Each of them leads to an improved understanding of the
role of frontal regions in executive functions, but none of these
theories covers all the deficits occurred.

**Role of working memory**

The most anatomically specific approach assumes the dorsolateral
prefrontal area of the frontal lobe to be critical for working memory.
The working memory which has to be clearly distinguished from the long
term memory keeps information on-line for use in performing a task. Not
being generated for accounting for the broad array of dysfunctions it
focuses on the three following deficits:

1.  Sequencing information and directing behavior toward a goal
2.  Understanding of temporal relations between items and events
3.  Some aspects of environmental dependency and perseveration

Research on monkeys has been helpful to develop this approach (the
delayed-response paradigm, Goldman-Rakic, 1987, serves as a classical
example).

**Role of Controlled Versus Automatic Processes**

There are two theories based on the underlying assumption that the
frontal lobes are especially important for controlling behavior in
non-experienced situations and for overriding stimulus-response
associations, but contribute little to automatic and effortless behavior
(Banich, 1997).

Stuss and Benson (1986) consider control over behavior to occur in a
hierarchical manner. They distinguish between three different levels, of
which each is associated with a particular brain region. In the first
level sensory information is processed automatically by posterior
regions, in the next level (associated with the executive functions of
the frontal lobe) conscious control is needed to direct behavior toward
a goal and at the highest level controlled self-reflection takes place
in the prefrontal cortex.

This model is appropriate for explaining deficits in goal-oriented
behavior, in dealing with novelty, the lack of cognitive flexibility and
the environmental dependency syndrome. Furthermore it can explain the
inability to control action consciously and to criticise oneself. The
second model developed by Shalice (1982) proposes a system consisting of
two parts that influence the choice of behavior. The first part, a
cognitive system called contention scheduling, is in charge of more
automatic processing. Various links and processing schemes cause a
single stimulus to result in an automatic string of actions. Once an
action is initiated, it remains active until inhibited. The second
cognitive system is the supervisory attentional system which directs
attention and guides action through decision processes and is only
active "when no processing schemes are available, when the task is
technically difficult, when problem solving is required and when certain
response tendencies must be overcome" (Banich , 1997).

This theory supports the observations of few deficits in routine
situations, but relevant problems in dealing with novel tasks (e.g. the
Tower of London task, Shallice, 1982), since no schemes in contention
scheduling exist for dealing with it. Impulsive action is another
characteristic of patients with frontal lobe damages which can be
explained by this theory. Even if asked not to do certain things, such
patients stick to their routines and cannot control their automatic
behavior.

**Use of Scripts**

The approach based on scripts, which are sets of events, actions and
ideas that are linked to form a unit of knowledge was developed by
Schank (1982) amongst others.

Containing information about the setting in which an event occurs, the
set of events needed to achieve the goal and the end event terminating
the action. Such managerial knowledge units (MKUs) are supposed to be
stored in the prefrontal cortex. They are organized in a hierarchical
manner being abstract at the top and getting more specific at the
bottom.

Damage of the scripts leads to the inability to behave goal-directed,
finding it easier to cope with usual situations (due to the difficulty
of retrieving a MKU of a novel event) and deficits in the initiation and
cessation of action (because of MKUs specifying the beginning and ending
of an action.)

**Role of a goal list**

The perspective of artificial intelligence and machine learning
introduced an approach which assumes that each person has a goal list,
which contains the tasks requirements or goals. This list is fundamental
to guiding behavior and since frontal lobe damages disrupt the ability
to form a goal list, the theory helps to explain difficulties in
abstract thinking, perceptual analysis, verbal output and staying on
task. It can also account for the strong environmental influence on
patients with frontal lobe damages, due to the lack of internal goals
and the difficulty of organizing actions toward a goal.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Brain Region                                                          Possible Function (left hemisphere)                                                                              Possible Function (right hemisphere)                                                                                                Brodman\'s Areas which are involved
  --------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------
  ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC)                               Retrieval and maintenance of semantic and/or linguistic information                                              Retrieval and maintenance of visuospatial information                                                                               44, 45, 47 (44 & 45 = Broca\'s Area)
  dorsolateral prefrontal cortex )DLPRF)                                Selecting a range of responses and suppressing inappropriate ones; manipulating the contents of working memory   Monitoring and checking of information held in mind, particularly in conditions of uncertainty; vigilance and sustained attention   9, 46
  anterior prefrontal cortex; frontal pole; rostral prefrontal cortex   Multitasking; maintaining future intentions & goals while currently performing other tasks or subgoals           same                                                                                                                                10
  anterior cingulate cortex (dorsal)                                    Monitoring in situations of response conflict and error detection                                                same                                                                                                                                24 (dorsal) & 32 (dorsal)

## Summary

It is important to keep in mind that reasoning and decision making are
closely connected to each other: Decision making in many cases happens
with a previous process of reasoning. People\'s everyday life is
decisively coined by the synchronized appearance of these two human
cognitive features. This synchronization, in turn, is realized by the
executive functions which seem to be mainly located in the frontal lobes
of the brain.

## References

•Krawczyk,Daniel (2018). Reasoning: The Neuroscience of How We Think.
Elsevier.

Goldstein, E. Bruce (2005). Cognitive Psychology - Connecting, Mind
Research, and Everyday Experience. Thomson Wadsworth.

• Marie T. Banich (1997). Neuropsychology. The neural bases of Mental
Function. Houghton Mifflin.

• Wilson, Robert A.& Keil, Frank C. (1999). The MIT Encyclopedia of the
Cognitive Sciences. Massachusetts: Bradford Book.

• Ward, Jamie (2006). The Student\'s Guide To Cognitive Science.
Psychology Press.

• Levitin, D. J.(2002). Foundations of Cognitive Psychology.

• Schmalhofer, Franz. Slides from the course: Cognitive Psychology and
Neuropsychology, Summer Term 2006/2007, University of Osnabrueck

## Links

**Reasoning**

Quizz to check whether you understood the difference of deduction and
induction

Short text with
graphics

Reasoning in
geometry

Euler circles

Wason Selection
Task

Difference: Induction,
Deduction

**Decision making**

How to make good
decisions

Making ethical
decisions

Web-published journal by the Society for Judgement and Decision
Making

**Executive functions**

Elaborate document (pdf) from the Technical University of Dresden (in
German)

Text from the Max Planck Society, Munich (in
English)

Short description and an extensive link
list

Executive functions & ADHD

