Biographie
Chercheur au CNRS depuis 2002
Education
Doctorat de Sciences Cognitives, Ecole Polytecnnique (Paris-Palaiseau).
Intérêts scientifiques:
Raisonnement, pragmatique expérimentale, psychologie évolutionniste, psychologie interculturelle, résolution des conflits
My research interests lie in describing the cognitive processes involved in our ability to reason and to draw inferences. My general approach contrasts with standard ones in that I do not consider inferential mechanisms to be uniform across the various domains of reasoning and I think that mechanisms most likely vary as a function of material, reasoning domains and even individuals. I believe that we exploit multiple sorts of processes in any single task, and that some mechanisms may well be more efficient than others. This has led to the following sorts of results. In the domain of relational reasoning, Walter Schaeken and I obtained data (by analyzing, not only validity judgments, but the wording-in-their-conclusions) showing that BOTH linguistic and analogical processes are involved in the representation of the premises (Van der Henst & Schaeken, 2005). Thus, these two processes – often intimated to be antithetical to each other – are shown to be intricately linked. With Dan Sperber, Guy Politzer and Ira Noveck, I routinely examine pragmatic aspects of reasoning. Briefly, this work has shown how pragmatic mechanisms guide 1) the interpretation of spatial descriptions and quantifiers (Van der Henst, Chevallier, Schaeken, Mercier, & Noveck (2008), Politzer, Van der Henst, Delle Luche, & Noveck, 2006) and 2) the production of conclusions (Van der Henst & Sperber, 2004). Specifically, we observe that the drawing of conclusions is driven, not only by considerations of logic but also, by considerations of relevance. More recently, I have started to investigate – with Hiroshi Yama and Hugo Mercier – how culture influences the way we deal with contradiction (Van der Henst, Mercier, Yama, H., Kawasaki, & Adachi, 2006). Our data challenge the culturalist view that Eas-Asian participants are more likely to follow a middle way strategy when they experience a contradiction than Western participants. Finally another line of my research uses electroencephalography (EEG) techniques to describe the event related potentials associated with basic deductive inferences such as Modus Ponens, (If P then Q; P; therefore Q; Bonnefond & Van der Henst, 2009). This too aims to challenge common beliefs about this ubiquitous inference in that we show that it can be divided in a sequence of more basic cognitive steps.
Publications