ArticleiScience2025
The role of memory in affirming-the-consequent fallacy.
Article in iScience, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
People tend to recognize that a transitive relation remains true even when its order is reversed. This affirming-the-consequent fallacy is thought to be uniquely related to human intelligence. It is generally thought that this fallacy is a byproduct of explicit reasoning at the moment of recognition of the reversed order. Here, we provide evidence suggesting a reconsideration of this account using an implicit memory paradigm, which minimizes the involvement of explicit reasoning. Specifically, we tested a two-stage memory model: (1) when a sequence of events is encoded, the memory of the reversed sequence is formed, resulting in the affirming-the-consequent fallacy, and (2) the memories of the forward and reversed sequences are integrated over time, reinforcing the fallacy. Results of behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments were consistent with this memory-based model. Our findings suggest that the affirming-the-consequent fallacy may begin unwittingly when individuals memorize a transitive relation.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.