Abstract

Inductive reasoning by domain experts often differs strikingly from patterns of reasoning seen in undergraduate populations. Bailenson et al. (2000) found that experts based typicality judgments on ideals and preferred typical items as premises on reasoning probes. The typical items were also rich in ecological associations. The present study employed fish experts from two cultural groups to tease apart idealness from richness of associations. Reasoning was based on ecological associations (mainly food chains) rather than idealness. Participants were also asked to judge probes that might have elicited inferences based on category-structural factors like taxonomic relations between premises and conclusions. In general reasoning was based not on structural factors but on causal-ecological associations.