Listening speaks to our intuition while reading promotes analytic thought

Listening Speaks to Our Intuition While Reading Promotes

Analytic Thought

Janet Geipel and Boaz Keysar

Department of Psychology, University of Chicago

It is widely assumed that thin king is independent of language modality because an arg ument is ei-

ther logically valid or invalid regardless of whether we rea d or he ar it. T his is tak en for gra nted in

areas such a s psychology, medicine, and the law. Contrary to this assum ption, we demonstrate that

thinking from spoken information leads to m ore intuitive performance comp ared with thinking

from written information. Consequently, w e propose that people think more intuitively in the spo-

ken modality and more analytically in the written modality. This effect was robust in ﬁve e xperi-

ments (N = 1,243), across a wide ra nge of thinking task s, from simple trivia questions to c omplex

syllogisms, and it generalized across two different languages, English and Chinese. We show that

this effect is consistent with n euroscientiﬁc ﬁndings and propose that modality dependence could

result from how language modalities emerge in development and are use d over time. This ﬁnding

sheds new light on the way language in ﬂuences though t and has impor tant impl icatio ns for res earch

that relies on linguistic materials and for domains where thinking and reasoning are central such a s

law, medicine, and business.

Keywords: thinking, language, modality, intuition, analysis

Supplemental materials:

https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001316.supp

The ability to communicate and the ability to think are fundamen-

tal human skills. We think based on information that is communi-

cated to us, and we communicate our conclusions using language.

Theories of thinking are typically concerned with knowledge repre-

sentation (Cheng & Holyoak, 1985) and with the rules and proce-

dures that are perfo rmed on thes e repres enta tio ns (e.g.,

Braine, 1998;

Rips, 1994). This is true regardless of whether a theory assumes a

propositional representation (e.g.,

Rips, 1983) or an analogical one

(

Ford & Johnson-Laird, 1985; Johnson-Laird, 2010). In general,

research has implicitly assumed that thought is inﬂuenced by the

informational content, and not by the language modality through

which the content is communicated.

Indeed, thinking should be modality independent because it i s

about the content of information. C onsider t he argument: “John

is taller than Mark, and Mar k is taller than Dave. Therefore, John

is taller than Dave.” The conclusion logically follows from the

premises and the rule of transitivity. Because trans itivity is con-

veyed via meaning, using transitivity should not depend on

whether we read this arg ument or hear it. This is s o self-evident

that it is r arely stated an d has been tacitly assumed in philoso-

phy, logic, law, and psychology. H ere we investigate the psycho-

logical validi ty of this a ssumption.

Thinking

Dual process models of thinking assume that two qualitatively dif-

ferent types of mental processes determine the way we think

(

Epstein, 1994; Kahneman & Frederick, 2002; Sloman, 1996, 2002).

One is often characterized as more automatic and intuitive, and the

other as more controlled and analytic (

Hammond, 1996; Schneider

& Shiffrin, 1977

). For example, the default-interventionist account

posits that intuitive processing delivers an initial response, which

may or may not be monitored and corrected by subsequent analytic

information processing (Evans, 2006; Kahneman, 2003). The paral-

lel-competitive account instead holds that the intuitive and analytic

processing routes operate simultaneously, but intuitive processing

frequently forms the ﬁnal response (Sloman, 1996, 2002).

Although dual process models have been highly i nﬂuent ial,

they are not universally accepted. A hybrid model suggests that

logical intuitive processes could be responsible for certain

cases that default-interve ntionist models have associate d with

analyti c processes (

De Neys, 2006). According to the hybrid

model, there are two types of intui tion: “ heuristic” intuition

Janet Geipel https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1957-6213

This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation

(1520074) and the University of Chicago Center for International Social

Science Research (CISSR). The authors thank Constantinos Hadjichristidis,

Leigh H. Grant, Veronica Vazquez-Olivier, Zeynep Aslan, and Luca Surian

for valuable comments on an earlier version of this article, as well as Yarra

Elmasry and Lee Dong for editing. Both authors contributed equally. All

data are available on the Open Science Framework, see

https://osf.io/wyqh6/

?view_only=63c7efa4e0e840e59b3ff9f5f67569dc

(Geipel & Keysar, 2021).

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Janet

Geipel, who is now at Department of Management, University of Exeter

Business School, Rennes Drive, Exeter EX4 4PU, United Kingdom. Email:

[email protected]c.uk

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

ISSN: 0096-3445 https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001316

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that hampers performance on tricky logical problems and “ logi-

cal” intuition tha t fac ilitates it. Furthermore, single process

models argue against a qualitative diffe rence between intuit ive

and analytic thinking processes, and instead view them as oppo-

site ends of a c ontinuum (e.g .,

Keren & Schul, 2009; Kruglan-

ski, 2013

; Kruglan ski & Gigerenzer , 2011; Osman, 2004).

Some suggest that the continuum reﬂects how accessible a

thought is, and that the response to a problem depends on

resources and motivat ion, which may inﬂu ence such accessibil-

ity (see

Kruglanski & Gigerenzer, 2011).

In what follows we assume that thinking can be relatively more

intuitive or relatively more analytic, without making additional

assumptions about the nature and interaction between these modes

of thinking. That is, we do not associate our proposal to a particu-

lar dual process model (default-interventionist, parallel, or hybrid)

nor does our account depend on whether thinking involves catego-

rically distinct types of processes or a continuum. We propose that

the language modality in which such problems are transmitted sys-

tematically inﬂuences thinking performance by differentially cuing

heuristic intuition. Speciﬁcally, we hypothesize that spoken prob-

lems favor heuristic intuition and that written problems rely more

on analytic processes.

Modality and Thinking

We reason that modality might inﬂuence thinking performance

because reading and hearing language might differentially activate

intuitive and analytic processing. This idea is motivated by neuro-

scientiﬁc research demonstrating differential neural responses

when people read narratives as opposed to when they hear them

(

Michael et al., 2001; Regev et al., 2013). These differential pat-

terns of neural activation are not simply related to low-level proc-

essing of sensory information, but to comprehending meaningful

linguistic information. Speciﬁcally, spoken narratives elicit reli-

able activation in the left anterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,

whereas written narratives elicit reliable activation in the left pos-

terior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. It has been suggested that

such double dissociation implies the existence of distinct control

processes for the two modalities, although the nature of the differ-

ences has not been speciﬁed (

Regev et al., 2013).

Furthermore, it has been proposed that cognitive processes

engaged in reading are more complex than those involved in lis-

tening (

Liberman, 1989; Margolin et al., 1982; Rayner et al.,

2012

), and that reading places relatively more demands on cogni-

tive processes that lead people to control, regulate, and maintain

resources (

Daneman & Merikle, 1996; Pimperton & Nation,

2010

). This is supported by research showing that reading stories

compared with listening to them results in fewer task-unrelated

thoughts because cognitive resources are more occupied and peo-

ple exert more cognitive control when reading (

Kopp & D’Mello,

2016

; Varao Sousa et al., 2013). It is possible that reading requires

people to exert more cognitive control than listening and that as a

result the act of reading may prompt more analytic thinking.

The development of language and its use over time provide fur-

ther motivations for the idea that the two modalities might differ-

entially inﬂuence thinking performance. The acquisition of spoken

language is spontaneous and effortless. The great majority of

humans acquire spoken language by mere exposure to it (

Liber-

man & Whalen, 2000; Pinker, 1994; Rayner et al., 2001; Rayner

& Clifton, 2009

). In contrast, the ability to read emerges later in

development and requires intense formal instruction and practice

(

Rayner et al., 2001). Without instruction, many people never

become literate (Liberman, 1989; Liberman & Whalen, 2000;

Rayner et al., 2001; Rayner & Clifton, 2009). Indeed, 14% of the

world population is illiterate (Roser & Ortiz-Ospina, 2018). This

difference between the acquisition of spoken and written language

has led some scholars to consider spoken language a human

“instinct,” and learning to read an intellectual achievement (

Liber-

man, 1992

; Liberman & Whalen, 2000; Musso et al., 2003; Pinker,

1994

; Tomasello & Vaish, 2013). The later and relatively effortful

acquisition of reading skills suggests a more deliberate process,

whereas the early and relatively spontaneous acquisition of spoken

language suggests a more intuitive process.

Furthermore, once spoken and written language are mastered,

they are routinely used in different contexts. Spoken language is

often used in casual settings and informal exchanges. In contrast,

written language is frequently used in formal contexts such as

school or work settings and in ofﬁcial documents. Written lan-

guage also involves more formal language (

Cunningham & Stano-

vich, 1998; Hayes & Ahrens, 1988), even when the exchange

itself is not necessarily formal. It has even been argued that spoken

language is a more primary means of communication than written

language (

McGregor, 2009). Such differences in the developmen-

tal trajectory and use of spoken and written language could pro-

mote relatively more heuristic intuitive responding when receiving

information in spoken form and relatively more analytic respond-

ing when receiving information in written form.

There is evidence from other domains t hat performance on

thinking problems depends on task, situation, and mindset. For

example, it is w ell documented that individualistic and collecti-

vist cultural mi ndsets can inﬂuence perception (

Nisbett et al.,

2001; Var num et al., 2010) and problem solving (Arieli & Sagiv,

2018

). For instance, Arieli and Sagiv (2018) studied bilingual-

bicultural individuals a nd f ound differences in problem-solving

performance depending on which cultural mindset was primed

through the language used. Other evidence suggests that context

can prime the use of more intuitive or more analytic thinking.

For example, instructing participants to draw a picture of their

current emotional state compared with solving mathematical

problems inﬂuenced the quality of their subsequent decisions

(

Usher et al., 2011). Similarly, answering questions that require

calculations primed a more analytic mindset compared with

answering ques tions about feelings (

Hsee & Rottenstreich,

2004). Finally, inducing a more mindful mindset reduced suscep-

tibility to cognitive biases by increasing analytic responding

(Maymin & Langer, 2021 ).

We propose that language modality might systematically inﬂu-

ence the way people think. Because spoken language is spontane-

ously acquired early in development, and because it is routinely

used in more informal contexts, it might make heuristic intuition

relatively more accessible. On the other hand, because reading is

more effortful and learned later in development and because writ-

ten language is used in more formal contexts, it might favor rela-

tively more analytic thinking. Our theory predicts that thinking

We thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this alternative

account.

GEIPEL AND KEYSAR

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based on spoken problems would result in comparatively more

heuristic, intuitive responses while thinking based on written prob-

lems would result in comparatively more analytic responses. The

experiments we report provide evidence for this modality depend-

ence theory.

Design and Logic of the Experiments

In ﬁve experiments, we examined whether listening prompts

relatively more intuitive responding and reading prompts rela-

tively more analytic responding. We tested problems that involve

a conﬂict between a heuristic, intuitive solution that for most peo-

ple is readily accessible and a solution that for most people is less

accessible and requires more analytic thought. We predicted that

such conﬂict problems should yield relatively more heuristic

responses when heard and relatively more analytic responses when

read.

Consider the following problem that involves such a conﬂict “If

you are running a race and you pass the person in second place,

what place are you in?” (

Thomson & Oppenheimer, 2016). Heu-

ristic intuition suggests that you are now in ﬁrst place but the more

analytic response is that you are in second place (

Oldrati et al.,

2016

; Travers et al., 2016; but see Bago & De Neys, 2017). All

our experiments test verbal problems that include such a conﬂict

between the answer supported by more heuristic intuition and by

more analytical thought. If our modality dependence theory is cor-

rect, then written problems would yield relatively more analytical

responses while spoken problems would cue relatively more intui-

tive responses.

Study 1 investigates the modality dependence theory with a sim-

ple task that requires the identiﬁcation of semantic anomalies.

Studies 2, 3, and 4 investigate it with insight problems like the

race problem described above. Finally, Study 5 examines the

effect of modality on deductive reasoning. All studies tested native

speakers of English and used English materials except for Study 3

that examined native speakers of Chinese and used materials in

Chinese. Its purpose was to examine whether the theory extends to

other languages and to a non-Western, educated, industrialized,

rich, and democratic (WEIRD) population (

Henrich et al., 2010).

Methodological Notes

Presentation Format

In all the studies, we aimed t o test how language modality

inﬂuences thinking performance in a relatively ecologically vali d

way while preserving experimental control. In the written condi-

tion participants read each problem in a self-paced manner as

this re ﬂects a natural way of reading. In the spoken condition

participants heard the problem in a natural pace. Following each

problem, participants had to cli ck on a button labeled “next” that

directed them to a new pag e where t hey were asked to provide

their response. Once participants clicked the button, the problem

was no longer accessible to them. This ensured that in both

modalities they could not go back and review t he problem. We

note variations i n the presentation format in the Method of each

experiment.

Response Format

Because our theory does not concern the response format, we

elected to keep the response format the same across modalities and

asked participants to type their response (or click in some cases) in

both modality conditions. This choice also had the advantage of

presenting a “switch” in both modality conditions. They switched

from reading to typing, or from listening to typing.

Study 1

Study 1 investigates thinking performance that requires the

identiﬁcation of semantic anomalies by using what is known as

the “Moses Illusion” (

Erickson & Mattson, 1981). When asked

“How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark?”

people typically rely on their intuition and respond “two.” But if

people instead reﬂect further they will realize that the very ques-

tion is wrong (

Fazio et al., 2015). It was Noah, not Moses, who

gathered animals on the ark. Therefore, the question itself involves

a semantic anomaly. The reason people show this illusion is that

Moses and Noah are two biblical characters who are highly associ-

ated semantically with each other (Sanford & Sturt, 2002). Heuris-

tic intuitive thinking relies on such associations and provides an

incorrect answer. To notice the anomaly, one must suppress this

erroneous intuition and access stored knowledge. Therefore, the

Moses Illusion is a useful tool to investigate our proposal. If listen-

ing prompts relatively more heuristic intuitive thinking, then it

should prompt more intuitive responses, which in this case is “two

of each animal.” In contrast, when such questions are read, people

would be more likely to detect the semantic anomalies.

Method

The data of all our studies are available on the Open Science

Framework, see

https://osf.io/wyqh6/?view_only=63c7efa4e0e84

0e59b3ff9f5f67569dc

(Geipel & Keysar, 2021). All materials are

presented in the

Supplemental Materials Method. The study pre-

diction, study design, sample size, and analyses were preregistered

on AsPredicted.org, see https://aspredicted.org/87j8g.pdf. The Uni-

versity of Chicago Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved the

research of all studies.

Power Analysis

We conducted an a priori power analysis for a dependent t test

(two-tailed) with the following estimates: a = .05, power = .95,

Cohen

= .40 (based on piloting). This analysis revealed that a mini-

mum of 84 participants was required for a within-participants

design. As a precaution of possible data loss, we preregistered and

requested 100 participants through Proliﬁc(

www.proliﬁc.co).

Participants

Participants were native English-speaking U.S. residents and

recruited online through Proliﬁc(

proliﬁc.co). We received data

from 107 participants of whom we excluded 18 (16.8%): 6.5%

because they failed an audio check at the beginning of the study

and 10.3% because they failed at least two out of four catch ques-

tions distributed across the study. We analyzed the data of the

remaining 89 participants (42 women, 46 men, 1 other, M

age

33.1 years, age range = 18 to 60 years).

LANGUAGE MODALITY AND THINKING

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Material and Procedure

Participants received 30 trivia questions, 15 in the written and

15 in the spoken modality. Thus, modality was manipulated within

participants. In each modality condition, participants received ﬁve

questions that were wrong, or semantically “distorted,” and 10 that

were undistorted control questions (see

Supplemental Materials

Method Table S1

for the full set of questions). The presentation

order of the spoken and written questions was blocked, and the

presentation order of the modalities was counterbalanced across

participants. We also counterbalanced across participants the list

of items in each modality condition so that each question appeared

in both modalities across subjects. Furthermore, within each mo-

dality block, the presentation order of the 15 trivia questions was

randomized separately for each participant.

Each trivia question had three response options: A blank box to

type a response, a “Do not know” button, and a “Wrong” button.

We instructed participants that they may or may not encounter

questions that have something wrong with them, and which do not

have an answer if taken literally (see

online supplemental

materials

for exact wording of the instructions). Then we provided

participants with an example of such a distorted question and

explained that the question itself is wrong, and that whenever they

encounter such a question they should answer “Wrong”. In the

spoken modality, the trivia questions were read aloud in a neutral

tone by two male native English speakers with a standard Ameri-

can English accent.

Following the trivia questions, participants were asked “Overall,

how would you rate your performance on this task?” (1 = worse

performance to 101 = best performance), and then completed a

short version of a Need for Cognition and Faith in Intuition scales

(

Cacioppo et al., 1984). The Need for Cognition scale included

statements such as: “I try to avoid situations that require thinking

in depth about something.,”, “I prefer complex to simple prob-

lems.” The Faith in Intuition scale included statements such as: “I

can usually feel when a person is right or wrong even if I cannot

explain how I know it.,” and “When it comes to trusting people, I

can usually rely on my ‘gut feelings.’” (1 = completely false to 5 =

completely true).

Subsequently, participants answered questions about the task

such as “Overall, how involved did you feel in this task?,”“Over-

all, how interesting was this task for you?,”“Overall, how bored

were you?,” and “Overall, how much did you like this task?” (all

on a slider scale, 1 = not at all, 101 = very much). Participants in

the spoken condition were then asked

“Overall, how well did you

understand the speaker?” (1 = not at all well,7=perfectly well)

and “Overall, how much did you like the voice of the speaker?”

(1 = not at all,7=very; see

Supplemental Materials Results

Tables S1

to S3 for descriptive statistics). Finally, participants

were asked to indicate their age, gender, and educational level (see

Supplemental Materials Results Table S6 for descriptive statistics).

Results and Discussion

Distorted Questions

We calculated the mean r ate of correct identiﬁcation of the

distorted questions for eac h p articipant (see

Figure 1). Partici-

pants detected distortion s signiﬁcantly more often in the written

than in the spoken condition (M

Written

= .53, CI [.46, .61], SD =

.34, M

Spoken

= .43, 95% CI [.36, .49], SD = .32), t(87) = 2.98,

p = .004, d

Cohen

= .32 (Wilcoxon signed-ranks test: T =

1446.50, z =2.72,p = .00 6, d

Cohen

=.39).

We submitted the mean rate of co rrect responses to a 2 (Order:

spoken ﬁrst, written ﬁrst) 3 2 (Speaker: male 1, male 2) 3 2 (Modal-

ity: spoken, written) mixed-factor analysis of variance (ANOVA)

with Order and Speaker as between-subjects factors and Modality

as the within-subject factor. This analysis revealed a signiﬁcant

main effect of modality, F(1, 84) = 8.76, p =.004,h

=.09,which

was qualiﬁed by a signiﬁcant Modality 3 Order interaction, F(1,

84) = 14.97, p , .001, h

= .15. Pairwise tests, adjusted for multi-

ple comparisons, showed that the modality effect was signiﬁcant

for participants who received the questions ﬁrst in the spoken mo-

dality (p = .001), but not for those who ﬁrst received the questions

in the written modality (p = .507). However, there was no main

effect of order, F(1, 84) = .64, p =.428,h

, .01, nor a main effect

of speaker, F(1, 84) = 1.79, p =.184,h

= .02. There was also no

signiﬁcant Modality 3 Speaker interaction, F(1, 84) = .99, p =

.322, h

, .01, nor was there a three-way Modality 3 Order 3

Speaker interaction, F(1, 84) , .01, p =.927,h

, .01. In general,

participants were less able to detect the anomaly when hearing than

when reading the problem, which suggests that they engaged heu-

ristic intuitive processes more when listening.

We then analyzed the rate of intuitive answers. In the Moses

question, this amounts to typing “two animals.” Participants were

signiﬁcantly less likely to provide such intuitive yet wrong

answers in the written than in the spoken condition (M

Written

= .37,

95% CI [.31, .43], SD = .29, M

Spoken

= .49, 95% CI [.43, .56],

SD = .31), t(87) = 3.46, p = .001, d

Cohen

= .41 (Wilcoxon signed-

ranks test: T = 573.00, z = 3.32, p = .001).

Finally, we averaged the rate of the “Do not know” responses

for each participant and found no difference between the modal-

ities (M

Written

= .09, 95% CI [.05, .13], SD = .19, M

Spoken

= .08,

95% CI [.04, .12], SD = .18), t(87) = .69, p = .489, d

Cohen

= .07

(Wilcoxon signed-ranks test: T = 396.50, z = 1.05, p = .295).

Figure 1

Mean Accuracy by Language Modality and Question Type (Study 1)

Note. Error bars illustrate standard errors of the mean.

GEIPEL AND KEYSAR

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Control Questions

The average rate of correct responses was comparable in the two

modalities (M

Written

= .81, 95% CI [.76, .86], SD =.23,M

Spoken

.80, 95% CI [.75, .85], SD =.24),t(88) = .54, p =.589,d

Cohen

=.05

(Wilcoxon signed-ranks test: T = 709.00, z =.06,p = .954). Simi-

larly,therateofthe“D o not kno w” responses was comparable

across modali ties (M

Written

= .16, 95% CI [.12, .21], SD =.23,

Spoken

= .17, 95% CI [.12, .21]), SD =.22,t(88) = .12, p =

.907, d

Cohen

, .01 (Wilcoxon signed-ranks test: T =683.00,z =

.06, p = .95 6).

Next, we averaged the rate of “Wrong” responses for the control

questions. Such a response would indicate that participants identi-

ﬁed an anomaly when no anomaly was present. Such responses

were equally rare in both modalities (M

Written

= .03, 95% CI [.01,

.04], SD = .06, M

Spoken

= .04, 95% CI [.01, .06], SD = .12), t(88) =

.68, p = .496, d

Cohen

= .10 (Wilcoxon signed-ranks test: T =

163.00, z = .01, p = .989).

Secondary Exploratory Results

We analyzed the results for the Need for Cognition, Faith in

Intuition, self-rated performance in the reasoning task, and per-

ceived task involvement. We found no support for a mediation or

a moderation with any of these measures. We present a full report

in the

Supplemental Materials Results.

In summary, the results suggest that language modality system-

atically inﬂuences thinking performance in this task. When people

respond to simple trivia questions, they are less likely to detect

semantic anomalies when they hear them than when they read

them. This performance difference suggests that the spoken mo-

dality makes heuristic intuitive thought more accessible than the

written modality.

We found an order effect such that the performance advantage

for the written modality was found when participants completed the

spoken version ﬁrst. All subsequent studies varied modality

between-participants, which avoids order effects. One might sug-

gest that the modality effect is due to a greater difﬁculty in compre-

hending spoken language because it is transient. Perhaps because

listeners cannot go back and replay the spoken information, as

opposed to being able to review the written information, they might

experience more difﬁculty holding spoken information in memory.

If this were the case, the performance deterioration in the spoken

condition should also be observed for the undistorted control ques-

tions that were closely matched to the distorted experimental ques-

tions. Given that there was no modality difference in performance

in the undistorted control questions, this ﬁnding argues against such

an account.

Study 2

Study 2 extended the investigation to verbal riddles, such as the

race problem presented in the introduction, known as the Cogni-

tive Reﬂection test (CRT;

Frederick, 2005; Thomson & Oppen-

heimer, 2016

). These problems involve a conﬂict between a

heuristic intuitive answer and a more analytic one. We purpose-

fully chose verbal problems that do not require the application of

complex mathematical and logic principles. We compared per-

formance on such problems to performance on control problems

where intuitive and analytic thinking do not provide conﬂicting

answers (“What did Rudolph’s nose do to help guide Santa’s

sleigh?”;

Sirota et al., 2021). We expect that in the spoken modal-

ity people will rely more on heuristic intuitive thinking and would

make more errors than in the written modality. However, it is pos-

sible that more errors in the spoken modality might result from

factors other than an enhanced role for intuition. If this is the case,

then performance should be worse in the spoken modality not just

in the conﬂict problems but also in the non-conﬂict problems. Our

theory predicts that thinking performance would be more intuitive

in the spoken modality and less accurate than in the written modal-

ity, but only for the riddles that involve a conﬂict, not for the con-

trol ones.

Method

Power Analysis

We estimated the required number of participants by conducting

an a priori power analysis for a one-way ANOVA using G*Power

using the following estimates: a = .05, power = .95, f = .22 (based

on piloting), number of groups = 2. This analysis revealed that a

minimum of 272 participants was required. We recruited more

participants to prevent a reduction in statistical power due to possi-

ble exclusions.

Participants

Participants were native English-speaking U.S. residents and

were randomly assigned to the spoken or written condition. We

recruited 353 participants (130 women, 216 men, 7 other, M

age

38.6 years, age range = 18–88 years) from August 2018 to Sep-

tember 2018. Of these, 212 participants (40.8% women) were

assigned to the spoken condition (female speaker n = 110, male

speaker n = 102) and 141 participants (59.2% women) to the writ-

ten condition. Given the overexposure of highly educated popula-

tions to reasoning problems such as the CRT (

Haigh, 2016), we

recruited participants from the downtown Center of the Decision

Research of the University of Chicago, which attracts participants

from a range of backgrounds.

Material and Procedure

Participants sat in a lab room in front of a computer screen with

headphones and ﬁrst rated their mood (“Overall, my mood is” on a

scale ranging from 10 = very unpleasant to 10 = very pleasant).

We measured participants’ mood because studies have shown that

mood can inﬂuence reasoning performance (e.g.,

Channon &

Baker, 1994

; Oaksford et al., 1996). Participants then received ﬁve

verbal conﬂict problems and two control problems (see

Supplemental Materials Method Table S2). As in Study 1, follow-

ing each problem participants provided their answer on a separate

page without the option to return to the actual problem. In the spo-

ken modality, either a female or a male native English speaker

with a standard American English accent read the problems aloud

in a neutral tone. We randomized the problem order across partici-

pants. Participants provided their answer by typing it in a blank

box on the computer. Once participants responded, they could con-

tinue to the next problem.

After answering the problems, participants received the follow-

ing questions: “Overall, how involved did you feel in this task?”

(slider scale, 1 = not at all, 101 = very much) and “Overall, how

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difﬁcult was it for you to respond to the questions?” (1 = not at all

difﬁcult,7=very difﬁcult; see

Supplemental Materials Results

Table S1

for descriptive statistics). Then participants answered a

short form of the Need for Cognition and Faith in Intuition scales

(

Cacioppo et al., 1984), with each scale consisting of ﬁve state-

ments (see

Supplemental Materials Results Table S2 for descrip-

tive statistics).

Participants in the spoken modality condition then rated the

speaker (“Overall, how well did you understand the speaker?”;1=

not at all well,7=Perfectly well, and “Overall, how much did you

like the voice of the speaker?”;1=not at all,7=very; see

Supplemental Materials Results Table S3 for descriptive statistics;

see

Supplemental Materials Results for exploratory analyses).

Finally, all participants reported their age, gender, political ori-

entation, religious beliefs (1 = not at all religious to 7 = very reli-

gious), education level, and employment status (see

Supplemental

Materials Results Table S4

to S6 for descriptive statistics; see

Supplemental Materials Results for exploratory analyses).

Results and Discussion

We ﬁrst considered the speaker ratings and found that both

speakers were understood equally well, Welch’s F(1, 202.89) =

.30, p = .586, d

Cohen

= .07, and were equally liked, Welch’s F(1,

195.12) = 2.86, p = .092, d

Cohen

= .24 (see Supplemental Materials

Results Table S3 for statistics). Because speaker identity did not

inﬂuence reasoning accuracy, Welch’s F(1, 210) = .05, p = .827,

Cohen

= .03, we combined results into a single spoken condition.

Conflict Problems

We computed the average accuracy rate over the ﬁve conﬂict

problems for each participant (see

Figure 2). We tested for differen-

ces between the conditions using the robust Welch’s F test because

the assumption of homogeneity of variance was violated. As pre-

dicted by our theory, mean accuracy was signiﬁcantly higher in the

written than in the spoken condition (M

Written

= .35, 95% CI [.30,

.39], SD = .27, M

Spoken

= .25, 95% CI [.22, .28], SD = .23), Welch’s

F(1, 263.05) = 12.45, p , .001, d

Cohen

=.40(Mann–Whitney U =

11,958.00, p = .001, d

Cohen

=.34).

Control Problems

We then averaged the number of correct responses across the

control problems and found no difference in accuracy rate between

the modality conditions (M

Written

= .88, 95% CI [.83, .92], SD =

.25, M

Spoken

= .87, 95% CI [.84, .91], SD = .26), Welch’s F(1,

306.56) = .01, p = .941, d

Cohen

= .04 (U = 14,828.00, p = .972, d

Co-

hen

= .01).

In summary, the results show that the spoken modality promotes

more intuitive responding than the written modality. Given that we

found no differences for control problems, these results support

our modality dependence theory according to which the spoken

modality cues comparatively more heuristic intuition than the writ-

ten modality. This generalizes the language modality effect on

thinking performance from the relatively simple verbal task of

detecting semantic anomalies to the relatively more complex task

of solving verbal insight problems.

Study 3

Writing systems vary between languages. We considered it

essential to evaluate whether the language modality effect we dis-

covered is speciﬁc to English or can be generalized to other lan-

guages. We chose Chinese for two reasons. While English is an

Indo-European language, Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan lan-

guage group. The two languages use different writing systems

with fundamentally different mapping between the sound of the

word and the way it is written. English uses a segmental, alphabet

system while Chinese uses a logographic system. If modality has

the same effect in Chinese, it is reasonable to conclude that its

impact generalizes to other languages beyond English. In addition

to generalizing to a different language, the study also generalizes

to a population that is not “WEIRD.” Finally, different from Study

2, Study 3 used the same number of conﬂict and control problems

so that we can compare them directly.

Method

Power Analysis

We estimated the number of participants by conducting an a pri-

ori power analysis for a mixed-factor ANOVA using an uncer-

tainty bias correction (

Anderson et al., 2017). The following

estimates were used (based on Study 2): a = .05, power = .80, F=

17.19, N = 386, number of between-subjects factor = 2, number of

within-subject factor = 2. This analysis revealed that we needed a

minimum of 296 participants. We recruited more participants to

prevent reduction in statistical power due to possible exclusions.

Participants

Participants were native Mandarin Chinese speakers from Bei-

jing and they were randomly assigned to the spoken or written

condition. We recruited 389 participants through the Beijing Cen-

ter of the University of Chicago (68.7% women, 31.1% men, .2%

others). Of these, 185 participants were randomly assigned to the

spoken condition and 204 to the written condition.

Figure 2

Mean Accuracy by Language Modality and Problem Type (Study 2)

Note. Error bars illustrate standard errors of the mean.

GEIPEL AND KEYSAR

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Material and Procedure

The study was conducted in the lab and the procedure was the

same as in Study 2. Participants received eight reasoning problems

in Chinese, four with a conﬂict between a relatively more intuitive

and a relatively more analytic solution, and four control problems

without such conﬂict (e.g., “How many cubic feet of sand are there

in a sandbox that is 1

deep 1

wide 3 1

long?”). The presentation

order of problems was randomized across participants. For the full

set of problems see

Supplemental Materials Method Table S3.In

the spoken modality, the problems were read aloud in a neutral

tone by one of two male speakers both native Chinese speakers

from Beijing. We used a 2 (Modality: written, spoken) 3 2 (Item

type: conﬂict, no-conﬂict) mixed-factorial design, with modality

as the between-subjects factor and item type as the within-subject

factor.

Results and Discussion

In contrast to Studies 1 and 2 where experimental and control

items were analyzed separately, here we analyzed them jointly

because they were equal in number. We expected that the written

modality would lead to more analytically correct responses for the

conﬂict problems than the spoken modality, but have less of an

inﬂuence on the control problems. For the dependent variable, we

focused on the difference in performance between the conﬂict and

control problems. Our theory predicts a bigger difference in the

spoken than the written modality condition.

As predicted, the difference was bigger in the spoken than in

the written condition (see

Figure 3). In the spoken modality, accu-

racy was 26 percentage points lower for conﬂict compared with

no-conﬂict problems. In contrast, in the written modality the corre-

sponding difference was only 15 percentage points. This interac-

tion between problem type and language modality was signiﬁcant,

F(1, 387) = 20.87, p , .001, h

= .05.

Pairwise comparisons showed a signiﬁcant difference between

conﬂict and no-conﬂict problems for the written condition, F(1,

387) = 87.17, p , .001, h

= .18, as well as for the spoken

condition, F(1, 387) = 231.03, p , .001, h

= .37. There was also

a main effect of modality, F(1, 387) = 47.47, p , .001, h

= .11,

and a main effect of problem type, F(1, 387) = 304.36, p , .001,

= .44.

In the data we report above, 12% of participants had one or

more missing values. This was due to technical issues that some

participants in the spoken condition experienced. They reported

that they could not hear the recording occasionally due to Internet

connection problems. To make sure that the results are not due to

this issue, we conducted additional tests where we restricted the

analysis to participants who had a complete data set.

The pattern of the results with this restricted data set mirrors the

pattern of the results with the full data set. Accuracy in the spoken

condition was 25 percentage points lower for conﬂict compared

with no-conﬂict problems, while in the written modality the corre-

sponding difference was 16 percentage points. This interaction

between problem type and language modality was signiﬁcant, F(1,

340) = 17.65, p , .001, h

= .05.

Pairwise comparisons showed a signiﬁcant difference between

conﬂict and no-conﬂict problems for the written condition, F(1,

340) = 105.97, p , .001, h

= .24, as well as the spoken condition,

F(1, 340) = 193.97, p , .001, h

= .36. There was also a main

effect of modality, F(1, 340) = 30.78, p , .001, h

= .08, and a

main effect of problem type, F(1, 340) = 298.58, p , .001, h

.47.

In summary, the results of Study 3 generalize the effect of mo-

dality on thinking performance to a Chinese population, using a

language with a writing system that is different from English. It

also provides a direct comparison of conﬂict and control problems.

Study 4

Studies 1 to 3 demonstrate higher response accuracy in solving

verbal conﬂict problems that are communicated in written rather

than spoken form. Therefore, the difference in performance sup-

ports the idea that the spoken modality makes more accessible

heuristic intuition than the written modality. However, there is an

alternative explanation to these ﬁndings, which suggests that they

reﬂect a simple presentation format effect. Spoken language tends

to be transient while written language can be reviewed and reana-

lyzed. Such presentation format might provide an advantage to the

written condition. Indeed, studies have shown that a spoken pre-

sentation format compared with a written presentation format can

hurt thinking performance as it taxes working memory by increas-

ing difﬁculty in keeping the problem information in mind (see

Gil-

hooly et al., 2002

). Such differences in presentation format could

cause our effect, but it would not reﬂect a modality effect. It would

reﬂect a presentation format effect. If this is the reason for the

ﬁndings of Studies 1 to 3, then they do not support our account

that modality differentially affects thought.

However, there are three main reasons to doubt this alternative

account. First, the one-sentence trivia questions used in Study 1

were relatively simple, so it is unlikely that the modality effect

was due to additional working memory load in the spoken modal-

ity to store and process the information. Second, in Study 1, where

modality was manipulated within participants and order was coun-

terbalanced, we observed a modality by order interaction whereby

the modality effect was present when the spoken problems were

presented ﬁrst but absent when the written problems appeared ﬁrst.

Figure 3

Mean Accuracy by Modality and Problem Type (Study 3)

Note. Error bars illustrate standard errors of the mean.

LANGUAGE MODALITY AND THINKING

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This result is consistent with our pr ediction that the written mo-

dality engages an analytic mindset, which could have spilled

over when solving the spoken problems. If the modality effect

was due to the additional memory load associated with the spo-

ken modality, then the performance for the spoken problems

should have been worse t han for the written problems irrespec-

tive of presentation order.

Third, in all our studies, performance

in the control problems was comparable across modality condi-

tions. If the modality effect was merel y due to additional difﬁ-

culty in processing and using the problem information it should

have also been manifested in the control problems.

Study 4 was designed to test the modality dependence theory

under conditions that rule out the alternative explanation that is

based on presentation format. To do that we presented the written

problems in a sequential way thereby mimicking the sequential

manner of the spoken problems. If the ﬁndings in Studies 1 to 3

are merely due to the presentation format, then the effect of modal-

ity should disappear in Study 4. If, however, the effect of modality

persists, then it would support the account that the two modalities

differentially inﬂuence thinking performance.

Method

Power Analysis

We estimated the number of participants required by conducting

an a priori power analysis for a one-way ANOVA using G*Power.

We used the following estimates: a = .05, power = .95, f = .20

(based on Study 2), number of groups = 2. This analysis revealed

a minimum sample of 328 participants. We recruited more partici-

pants to prevent a reduction in statistical power due to possible

exclusions.

Participants

Participants were native English-speaking U.S. residents and

were randomly assigned to the spoken or written condition. We

requested 410 participants through Proliﬁc(www.proliﬁc.ac).

Study 4 was conducted online, so we included three attention

checks. We excluded anyone who failed one or more attention

checks (24 participants, 5.9%). The results presented below are

based on the remaining 386 participants (176 women, 207 men, 3

unknown, M

age

= 40.2 years, age range = 21 to 80 years). Of these,

116 were in the spoken condition, 123 in the written sequential

condition, and 147 in the standard written condition.

Material and Procedure

Study 4 used the sam e materials and pr ocedure as Stu dy 2.

In addition to the spoken and written mo dality conditions, we

included a written-sequential condition th at simulated the tran-

sient presentation of spoke n l anguage. To do this, we presente d

the written problems in separa te phrases on co nsecutive

screens so that pa rticipants could not reread th em. Participants

had to p roceed to the next part of the pro blem by clicking on a

button labeled next. Onc e they pressed the nex t button they

were not allowed to go back. In the s poken modality, w e pre-

sented the audio information, and just l ike in the written mo-

dality, participants controlled the next button to proceed to the

response page. Crucially, participants co uld not anticipate the

question bef ore the ﬁnal par t disa ppeared . We d ecided to use

this text segmentation reading m ethod for two reasons. First,

this method represents the most natural and ecologically valid

way of equating the spo ken and written language modalities

andiswidelyusedindigitalmedia(

Szarkowska & Gerber-

Morón, 2018) . Second, research sug gests that reading, lik e lis-

tening, is largely serial and incrementa l (se e

Rayner & Clifton,

2009).

In each modality condition, we presented participants with ﬁve

conﬂict reasoning problems and three control problems (see

Supplemental Materials Method Table S2). In the spoken modality,

the problems were read aloud by two male native English speakers

with a standard American English accent. Participants then ﬁlled

the Need for Cognition and Faith in Intuition scales as in Study 1

(see

Supplemental Materials Results Table S2). Lastly, participants

indicated their age, gender, education level, and employment status

(see

Supplemental Materials Results Table S7).

Results and Discussion

Conflict Problems

Participants in the written-sequential condition and the standard

written condition were signiﬁcantly more likely to solve the prob-

lems correctly (M

Written-sequential

= .47, 95% CI [.42, .51], SD =

.24; M

Written-standard

= .54, 95% CI [.50, .58], SD = .25) than were

participants in the spoken condition (M

Spoken

= .37, 95% CI [.32,

.41], SD = .23), Welch’s F(2, 251.39) = 17.40, p , .001, d

Cohen

.60; H(2) = 31.92, p , .001, d

Cohen

= .58 (see Figure 4). Crucially,

pairwise tests, adjusted for multiple comparisons, revealed a sig-

niﬁcant difference between the written-sequential and spoken con-

ditions (M

Diff

= .10, 95% CI [.03, .18], SE = .03, p = .004,

Cohen

= .43). There was also a signiﬁcant difference between the

written-standard and spoken conditions (M

Diff

= .18, 95% CI

[.25, .11], SE = .03, p , .001, d

Cohen

= .73) and a smaller sig-

niﬁcant difference between the written-sequential and the written-

standard conditions (M

Diff

= .08, 95% CI [.15, .01], SE = .03, p =

.034, d

Cohen

= .31).

Figure 4

Mean Accuracy by Language Modality and Problem Type (Study 4)

Note. Error bars illustrate standard errors of the mean.

* p , .05.

GEIPEL AND KEYSAR

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Control Problems

Again there was no signiﬁcant difference in accuracy between

the modalities for the control problems (M

Written-sequential

= .88,

SD = .20, 95% CI [.84, .91], M

Written-standard

= .90, SD = .17, 95%

CI [.86, .93], M

Spoken

= .87, SD = .21, 95% CI [.84, .91]), Welch’s

F(2, 249.80) = .49, p = .616, d

Cohen

= .11; H(2) = 2.11, p = .348,

Cohen

= .03. This shows that the spoken modality did not induce

an overall deterioration in performance, and that the reduced accu-

racy in the spoken modality was unique to problems that involved

a conﬂict between heuristic intuitive and analytic thought.

In summary, these results replicate the ﬁndings of Studies 1 to 3

and extend the modality effect to a written presentation format that

is sequential. Therefore, participants in both modality conditions

had to keep the information in mind and were unable to revisit it.

This ﬁnding, then, supports the idea that language modality inﬂu-

ences thinking performance and speaks against the possibility that

this effect is simply explained by increased difﬁculty in processing

the problem information in the spoken condition due to its ephem-

eral nature.

Study 5

Study 5 expanded the scope of the investigation by examining

deductive reasoning (Henle, 1962). A central aspect of logical rea-

soning is validity, which is strictly a formal property that is inde-

pendent of meaning and truth. A logical argument is valid if and

only if its conclusion follows from the premises. For example, the

following syllogism is logically invalid:

Premise 1. All living things need water

Premise 2. Roses need water

Conclusion. Therefore, roses are living things

Even though the premises and the conclusion are true, this syllo-

gism is invalid because the conclusion does not follow from the

premises. However, because people believe the conclusion, they tend

to judge the syllogism as logically valid. More generally, truth-value

negatively impacts validity judgments when validity and truth con-

ﬂict (

Evans et al., 1983). People are more likely to judge valid argu-

ments as invalid when the conclusion is unbelievable, and they are

more likely to judge invalid arguments as valid when the conclusion

is believable. This is called “belief bias” (

Wilkins, 1929).

Study 5 capitalized on this bias which appears to be driven by

heuristic intuition. The perception of truth is claimed to be an intu-

itive process that connects to our beliefs (

Gilbert, 1991). To reduce

the belief bias when judging validity, most people must recruit

analytic processes and focus on formal, analytic aspects of the syl-

logism (

Evans & Curtis-Holmes, 2005), while only few people

with high cognitive ability can automatically apply logical princi-

ples (

Raoelison et al., 2020). Therefore, if thinking performance is

modality dependent, and listening cues relatively more heuristic

intuition, then the belief bias should be greater in the spoken than

in the written modality.

Method

The prediction, study design, sample size, and analyses were

preregistered on

AsPredicted.org, see aspredicted.org/z78av.pdf.

Power Analysis

We conducted an a priori power analysis for an independent

samples t test (two-tailed) using the following estimates: a = .05,

power = .80, d

Cohen

= .50 (based on piloting), df = 1. This analysis

revealed a minimum sample of 128 participants. We recruited

more participants to prevent reduction in statistical power due to

possible exclusions.

Participants

Participants were native English-speaking U.S. residents and

were randomly assigned to the spoken or written condition. We

requested 140 participants through Proliﬁc(

www.proliﬁc.ac) and

collected data from 156 who passed the screening tests, in antici-

pation of some attrition. Seven participants (4.5%) were excluded

because they failed one or more attention checks. We analyzed the

data of the remaining 149 participants (83 women, 62 men, 4

other, M

age

= 31.4 years, age range = 18–60 years), where 80 were

in the spoken condition and 69 were in the written condition.

Material and Procedure

Participants received 12 syllogisms, each comprising two prem-

ises (four or ﬁve words) and a conclusion (ﬁve or six words). Six

syllogisms were valid but had an unbelievable conclusion, and six

were invalid but had a believable conclusion. We followed

West

et al. (2008)

in this design, in which the believability of the infor-

mation was inconsistent with the logical format of the syllogisms

in both types. To solve such problems correctly, participants need

to put aside their knowledge of facts and reason based solely on

the relationship between the premises and the conclusion.

Supplemental Materials Method Table S4 presents the full set of

items. Before beginning the task, participants received an explana-

tion of logical validity (see

Supplemental Materials Method for

the wording of the instructions). To ensure participants ’ under-

standing of the task, following the instructions partici pants

were asked two task comprehension questions. If participants

incorrectly responded t o one of these questions, they were

redirected to the instruction page. Then participants practiced

two examples of each syllog ism type followed by fe edback on

their performance (see

Supplemental Materials Method for the

wording of the feedback).

Participants in the spoken condition heard the syllogisms spoken

in a neutral tone by two male native English speakers from the Chi-

cago area with a standard American English ac cent. Participants in

the written sequential and spoken conditions received the syllogisms

in a transient form: ﬁrst premise (four words), second premise (four

to ﬁve words), and conclusion (ﬁve to six words), each presented on

aseparatescreen,andtheywerenotallowedtogoback(see

Figure

5). Following each written and spoken information, participants had

to proceed to the next part of the syllogism by clicking on a button la-

beled “nex t”.

The written condition is analogous to the sequential written con-

dition tested in Study 4 and hence an eventual modality effect can-

not be ascribed to differences in presentation format as in both the

spoken and the written condition participants have to keep the infor-

mation in mind and integrate it to evaluate the validity of the con-

clusion. Participants’ task was to judge the syllogism’s validity by

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selecting either “Valid” or “Invalid.” The presentation order of the

syllogisms was randomized across participants.

Previous research has found performance differences with syllo-

gistic reasoning between spoken and written presentation formats,

but not in the context of the belief bias (

Gilhooly et al., 1993). Par-

ticipants provided more correct responses in the written condition.

However, these ﬁndings could be fully explained as a presentation

format effect, not necessarily a modality effect. This is because the

syllogisms in the written condition were not presented sequentially

but were presented in their entirety without time limits. This gave

a clear advantage to participants in the written condition over the

spoken condition as they did not have to keep the written premises

and conclusions in working memory while evaluating validity. In

our case, participants received the premises and the conclusion

sequentially and did not have access to them when they evaluated

validity. Given that in both modality conditions participants had to

keep this information in mind, our procedure provides an opportu-

nity to evaluate a modality effect as distinct from a presentation

effect.

After completing the syllogism task, participants answered the

following questions: “How many problems out of 12 do you think

you solved correctly?” (0 to 12 scale), and “Overall, how difﬁcult

was it for you to solve the problems?” (slider scale: 1 = not at all

difﬁcult, to 101 = extremely difﬁcult). Then, they rated their agree-

ment with the following statements: “While reading the problems,

I was fully absorbed,”“I enjoyed reading the problems,”“I felt

totally involved in reading the problems,”“While reading the

problems, I had the impression that time was passing quickly,”

and “I found the task extremely rewarding” (1 = strongly disagree,

2=disagree,3=neither agree nor disagree,4=agree,5=

strongly agree). In the spoken condition, the text had “listening

to” instead of “reading” (see

Supplemental Materials Results

Table S1

for descriptive statistics).

For expl oratory purposes, participants then r eceived three

CRT type problems in written form. The goal was to explore

whether solving syll ogisms in the two modalities prompts differ-

ent levels of cognitive fatigue (Ackerman & Kanfer, 2009 ).

Previous evidence demo nstrates that increased cognitive f atigue

deteriorates performance in subsequent reasoning tasks (e.g.,

Inzlicht & Schmeichel, 2012; Mani et al., 2013; Timmons &

Byrne, 2019 ). Therefore, if modality differentially taxes cogni-

tive resources and consequently inﬂ

uences cognitive fatigue,

then this might inﬂuence performance on the subsequent CRT

task.

Following the CRT task, participants ﬁlled out the Need for

Cognition and Faith in Intuition scales (see

Supplemental

Materials Results Table S2 for descriptive statistics). Finally, par-

ticipants answered questions concerning their prior experience

with solving syllogisms, formal education in logic, their age, gen-

der, and educational level (see

Supplemental Materials Results

Table S7

for descriptive statistics; see Supplemental Materials

Results for exploratory analyses).

Results and Discussion

Experience With Solving Syllogisms

First, we evaluated whether participants in the two modality

conditions differed in their past experience in solving syllogisms

or their formal education in logic. We found no differences for

experiences, v

(1, N = 149) = .02, p = .886, / = .01, or formal edu-

cation in logic, v

(1, N = 149) = .14, p = .709, / = .03.

Validity Judgments

We computed an accuracy index for each participant by averag-

ing the rate of correct acceptance of valid problems and correct

rejection of invalid problems across the 12 syllogisms. Preliminary

analyses revealed that speaker identity did not affect accuracy

(F , 1); therefore, we dropped this factor from the analyses.

As predicted, participants in the written condition were signiﬁ-

cantly more accurate in judging validity than participants in the

spoken condition (M

Written

= .60, 95% CI [.55, .65], SD = .20,

Spoken

= .54, 95% CI [.50, .58], SD = .18), Welch’s F(1,

136.39) = 4.26, p = .041, d

Cohen

= .34, U = 3,267.50, z = 1.95, p =

.051, d

Cohen

= .18.

Figure 5

Illustration of the Procedure Used in Study 5

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This shows that participants in the spoken condition were more

affected by the belief bias, suggesting that the spoken modality

engages comparatively more heuristic intuition than the written

modality.

Performance in the CRT Task

The CRT problems followed the syllogism task and were

received by all participants in written form. This task was included

for exploratory purposes. Its aim was to assess whether the modal-

ity in which the syllogisms were presented differentially taxed

cognitive resources. If it did, then performance on the subsequent

CRT problems could be affected as studies suggest that cognitive

fatigue deteriorates reasoning performance. There was no differ-

ence in CRT performance across the modalities (M

Written

= .68,

95% CI [.59, .77], SD = .38, M

Spoken

= .63, 95% CI [.54, .71],

SD = .40), Welch’s t(145.72) = .88, p = .378, d

Cohen

= .15, U =

2,971.50, z = .87, p = .387, d

Cohen

= .20. This suggests that the mo-

dality effect on syllogistic reasoning is not due to increased cogni-

tive fatigue in the spoken modality. Therefore, the way we

presented the spoken and written information was successful in

equating the conditions in terms of working memory load.

CRT performance correlated with performance in the syllogism

task, r(147) = .285, p , .001; however, the magnitude of this cor-

relation did not differ across conditions (Written: r(78) = .335, p =

.002, Spoken: r(104) = .309, p = .001; z = .19, p = .848, q

Cohen

.03). This suggests that the two tasks revealed consistent individ-

ual differences in reasoning: people that perform better with syllo-

gisms also perform better on the CRT (e.g.,

Toplak et al., 2014).

Because the written condition involved a sequential presenta-

tion, the modality effect cannot be ascribed to a simple presenta-

tion advantage in the written condition. Indeed, the results from

the CRT task provide converging indirect evidence, showing that

cognitive fatigue after the syllogism task was not affected by the

modality of performing it.

In summary, Study 5 demonstrated that judgments of logical va-

lidity are affected by modality. Participants were more susceptible

to the belief bias when they heard the syllogisms than when they

read them. To the extent that the belief bias is linked to intuition

(

Evans & Curtis-Holmes, 2005), the present results suggest that

thinking from spoken premises relies relatively more on heuristic

intuition than thinking from written premises.

General Discussion

Our results suggest that thinking performance is modality de-

pendent. When people answered spoken trivia questions, they

were less likely to detect semantic distortions and more likely to

fall for the Moses illusion than when they answered the same trivia

questions in written form. When people solved spoken riddles,

they responded relatively more intuitively than when they solved

the same riddles in written form. When judging logical validity,

people were more affected by the belief bias in the spoken modal-

ity, suggesting that heuristic intuition plays a larger role in that

modality than in the written one. Clearly, thinking is not modality

independent.

We found evidence for a modality effect on thinking perform-

ance by testing two very different languages namely English and

Chinese, which speaks to the generalizability of the effect across

languages and populations. Furthermore, we tested problems

involving different levels of complexity: simple detection of

semantic anomalies, relatively more complex verbal riddles, and

harder multipremised syllogisms. The fact that the modality effect

was present using simple one-sentence semantic anomalies speaks

against the idea that the effect is due to an increased difﬁculty of

processing the information in the spoken modality. Furthermore,

the effect persisted when presenting written problems in a sequen-

tial form mimicking the presentation format of spoken problems.

This further helps to rule out a simple explanation that the effect is

due to differences in presentation format. Our results, therefore,

suggest that the very comprehension of spoken problems affects

thinking performance differently than the comprehension of writ-

ten problems, because the spoken modality privileges heuristic

intuition, while the written modality privileges analytic thought.

Although problems that require logical reasoning tend to beneﬁt

from analytic processing, correct responding can also be generated

spontaneously without deliberation. For example, one can solve rea-

soning problems by automatically applying logical or mathematical

principles that have been internalized (

De Neys, 2006). Such logical

intuition should apply predominantly to problems whose solutions

involve the application of logico-mathematical principles (

Sinayev &

Peters, 2015

). With the exception of Study 5, the present studies

tested verbal problems that do not require the application of logico-

mathematical principles (

Sirota et al., 2021). Therefore, performance

in Studies 1 to 4 is unlikely to be relevant to logical intuition.

Alternative Explanation

An alternative account for the impact of modality on thinking

might be that listening is more cognitively demanding than reading,

hence incre as ing the load on working memo ry (Klingner et al.,

2011

). One could imagine two versions of this account. One version

is that because spoken language is transient, people rely more on

working memory to keep track of the information thereby depleting

working memory resources (

Gilhooly et al., 2002). This could reduce

the resources available to think deliberatively. Our results speak

against this account because they demonstrate that the modality effect

persists even when transience of the language is controlled.

A second version could suggest that cognitive demand is higher

in the spoken modality for reasons other than its transient nature.

The literature does not provide evidence for this account. If any-

thing, research on short term memory for spoken and written lan-

guage suggests the opposite. Studies using relatively simple

sequential working memory tasks, such as digit span tasks, found

that performance for spoken stimuli tends to be better than for

written stimuli (e.g.,

Greene, 1992; Penney, 1989). Similarly,

research testing modality effects with a working memory task in

which sequences of letters are presented shows better performance

accuracy with spoken than with written language (

Amon & Ber-

tenthal, 2018

). Had spoken language been more cognitively

demanding, performance in these working memory tasks should

have been worse with spoken language, not better.

Theoretical Contribution

We propose that thinking performance based on spoken prob-

lems is systematically different than thinking performance based

on written ones because the spoken modality privileges heuristic

LANGUAGE MODALITY AND THINKING

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intuitive thinking, while the written modality privileges analytic

thinking. This is motivated by the modalities’ distinct engagement

of controlled processing, developmental trajectory, and the context

in which they are likely to be used over time. Written language is

assumed to engage more controlled processing than spoken lan-

guage (

Varao Sousa et al., 2013). Furthermore, spoken language is

acquired spontaneously and intuitively while written language is

acquired via formal instruction (

Liberman, 1992; Liberman &

Whalen, 2000

; Pinker, 1994). Finally, spoken language is typically

used in informal conversations while written language is often

used in formal contexts. Therefore, it is likely that the modality

effect is related to differences in the underlying cognitive process-

ing, developmental trajectory, and context of use of these

modalities.

Our ﬁnding contributes to the theoretical understanding of the

relationship between language and thought broadly deﬁned.

Research has identiﬁed mild effects on cognition of structural ele-

ments of language, such as grammatical gender, as well as other

aspects of language including metaphors about time or motion

(Boroditsky, 2001; Gumperz & Levinson, 1991 ; Sapir, 1929; Sera

et al., 1994

; Whorf, 1956; but see Gleitman & Papafragou, 2012).

Our theory and the supporting studies add an important novel

dimension to our understanding of how language might inﬂuence

cognition: through its modality.

Our research also contributes to theories of thinking, which tend

to be concerned with the conditions under which thought involves

deliberation and intuition (

Evans & Curtis-Holmes, 2005; Sloman,

2002

; Thompson, 2012). Research has demonstrated that individ-

ual differences as well as contextual factors can impact the extent

to which thinking involves deliberation and intuition (

De Neys,

2006

; Sorrentino & Stanovich, 2002; Toplak et al., 2014). For

example, high cognitive ability and instructions to focus on the

logical nature of the task can promote correct performance (

Evans

et al., 1994

; Newstead et al., 1992; Sorrentino & Stanovich, 2002)

while time pressure favors heuristic intuition (

Evans & Curtis-

Holmes, 2005

; Finucane et al., 2000). Our ﬁnding suggests that

language modality might modulate such thinking processes, lead-

ing spoken language to privilege heuristic intuitive thinking com-

pared with written language.

Furthermore, the vast majority of thinking research, as well as

research on judgment and decision making, presents instructions

and linguistic stimuli in the written modality under the implicit

assumption that modality is immaterial for evaluating theories of

thinking and decision making. Our results illustrate that this meth-

odological practice might lead to a systematic underestimation of

the extent to which people respond intuitively to problems. The

magnitude of the misestimation could be signiﬁcant because

everyday thinking is often based on spoken communications.

Implications

Our ﬁndings have potentially important implications in a variety

of domains. Because they challenge the fundamental assumption

that thought is modality independent, our ﬁndings could impact

the way research is conducted. Research in psychology, sociology,

political science, economics, and other social sciences often

involves instructions and stimuli. However, most choose the mo-

dality of the language by convenience, precisely because of the

implicit assumption that modality is immaterial for most tasks. For

example, some surveys present questions in writing while in others

the questions are spoken directly to participants. The modality

effect suggests that providing surveys in the spoken modality

responses might be relatively more intuitive. Thus, a public opin-

ion survey about illegal immigration might tap into feelings when

conducted orally, while a written format might involve fewer such

emotional considerations. Therefore, such disciplines might rely

on our ﬁndings for a more reasoned selection of the modality to

not bias results.

Our ﬁndings also carry potential implications for any domain

where thinking and reasoning is central such as medicine, busi-

ness, and the law. For example, legal reasoning is crucial for the

practice of law, which applies both rules of deductive reasoning

and analogical reasoning via cases (Pashler & Ellsworth, 2013 ).

However, it does not consider language modality as a factor. A

legal brief makes the same argument whether it is read or heard,

but it might not have the same impact. Our discovery suggests that

reading an argument would lead to more analytic outcomes,

whereas hearing it would give more consideration to heuristic

intuition.

Conclusion

In the history of humanity, written language developed thou-

sands of years after spoken language (

Houston, 2004). As recently

as 200 years ago, only 12% of the world’s population was able to

read and write (Roser & Ortiz-Ospina, 2018). Our studies demon-

strate that the choice between the older and the newer language

modality is consequential: Modality directly affects thought, mak-

ing us more intuitive when we hear a problem while more analytic

when we read it. This ﬁnding should inform not only theories of

thinking, but also practices in which the nature of thought is conse-

quential such as policy making, judicial reasoning, and medical

decision making.

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Received December 8, 2021

Revision received June 29, 2022

Accepted September 20, 2022

LANGUAGE MODALITY AND THINKING

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