Expanding the universe of categorical syllogisms: A challenge for reasoning researchers

Syllogistic reasoning, in which people identify conclusions from quantified premise pairs, remains a benchmark task whose patterns of data must be accounted for by general theories of deductive reasoning. However, psychologists have confined themselves to administering only the 64 premise pairs historically identified by Aristotle. By utilizing all combinations of negations, the present article identifies an expanded set of 576 premise pairs and gives the valid conclusions that they support. Many of these have interesting properties, and the identification of predictions and their verification will be an important next step for all proponents of such theories. Copyright 2005 Psychonomic Society, Inc.