--- abstract: 'The idea that reasoning is a singular accomplishment of the human species has an ancient pedigree.Yet this idea remains as controversial as it is ancient. Those who would deny reasoning to nonhuman animals typically hold a language-based conception of inference which places it beyond the reach of languageless creatures. Others reject such an anthropocentric conception of reasoning on the basis of similar performance by humans and animals in some reasoning tasks, such as transitive inference. Here, building on the modal similarity theory of Vigo [J Exp Theor Artif Intell, 2008 (in press)], we offer an account in which reasoning depends on a core suite of subsymbolic processes for similarity assessment, discrimination, and categorization. We argue that premise-based inference operates through these subsymbolic processes, even in humans. Given the robust discrimination and categorization abilities of some species of nonhuman animals, we believe that they should also be regarded as capable of simple forms of inference. Finally, we explain how this account of reasoning applies to the kinds of transitive inferences that many nonhuman animals display.' altloc: [] chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: 'Vigo, R., Allen, C., (2009). How to reason without words: inference as categorization.Cognitive Processing 10(1): 51-88.' confdates: ~ conference: ~ confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: - vigo@ohio.edu - ~ creators_name: - family: Vigo given: Ronaldo honourific: Professor lineage: '' - family: Allen given: Colin honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 2009 date_type: published datestamp: 2012-11-09 17:47:36 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/79/58 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: 0 edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 7958 fileinfo: application/pdf;http://cogprints.org/7958/1/Vigo%20%26%20Allen%20(2009a).pdf full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: pub issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: ~ item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: 'Animal Cognition, Categorization, Reasoning, Learning, Similarity ' lastmod: 2012-11-09 17:47:36 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: 1 pagerange: 51-88 pubdom: TRUE publication: 'Cognitive Processing ' publisher: 'Springer ' refereed: TRUE referencetext: "Allen C (1999) Animal concepts revisited. 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J Comp\r\nPsychol 115:219–226\r\nZentall TR (2001) The case for a cognitive approach to animal learning and behavior. Behav Process 54:65–78\r\n" relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 16 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2012-01-24 17:01:44 subjects: - appl-cog-psy - cog-psy - comp-psy - comp-sci-art-intel - dev-psy - ling-compara - phil-lang - phil-mind succeeds: ~ suggestions: ~ sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: 'How to reason without words: inference as categorization' type: journalp userid: 15877 volume: 10