People apply mental models using their imagination to solve deductive reasoning problems. The mental model is the representation of a situation in someones mind and can help determine validity of syllogisms.

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Eliminating different hypothesis to draw a conclusion.  The conclusion logically follows from "premises".

Deductive reasoning

Consists of premises followed by a conclusions.

Syllogism

Goldstein, E. B. (2014). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience. Nelson Education.


Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience

Both Induction and Deduction are necessary within casual inference because they are two ways of approaching a problem and often go hand in hand. Induction goes from evidence -> hypothesis while deduction works in the forward direction; cause (hypothesis) -> effect (theory, conclusion). Artificial Intelligence has started automating Induction and Deduction, an example is Bayesian networks. 

Stages of Casual Inference: Induction and Deduction

In the case of Sherlock Holmes, deductive reasoning was his ability to investigate and then eliminate different hypotheses to eventually find the correct one and solve the case.

Sherlock Holmes' use of deductive reasoning

Mental model approach

In order to test a rule it is necessary to look to falsify the rule. The canonical problem experiment that shows this is the Wason four-card problem, where students are asked to test the validity of a rule given four cards and must try to turn over cards to confirm and falsify the rule to determine if its valid.

Falsification principle

Statements that justifies a conclusion. They are assumptions that something is true.

Premises

Syllogisms that begin with all, none or some.

Categorical Syllogisms

A chain of logical deductions that leads to a proposition form an original (base) set of axioms.

Formal Proofs (of propositions)

People have a tendency to think a syllogism is valid if it looks like it is true.

Belief Bias

Syllogisms that have a premise of "if... then..."

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