HOW TO DETECT REASONING REMEMBERING DEPENDENCE - (AND HOW NOT TO)

In opposition toBrainerd and Reyna (1992), it is argued that the absence of an association between children's reasoning and memory for premises in a number of studies does not reflect any underlying independence between reasoning and remembering. Instead, those nonsignificant results have occurred either (a) because memory was tested for premises other than those actually used in reasoning or (b) because the proportion of children reasoning from the premises actually tested was insufficient to reject the null hypothesis of independence. When these factors are controlled, a dependence between reasoning and remembering is indeed found, as described byChapman and Lindenberger (1992). Brainerd and Reyna's claim that the data reported in that study show reasoning-remembering independence when reanalyzed is found to be based on confusion between stochastic and deterministic dependence and on faulty statistical arguments. © 1992.