Probing interactions between student knowledge, intuition, and reasoning

Formal knowledge is critical for productive reasoning. Dual-process theories of reasoning indicate that intuition plays an equally essential role in cognitive processes. Intuition can significantly enhance or impede explicit reasoning, even among individuals with accurate formal knowledge. We have designed and implemented Online Reasoning Chain Construction Assessment tool to investigate the interactions between students' formal knowledge, reasoning, and intuition. In these tools, students are provided with correct reasoning elements: accurate statements related to the physical context, relevant concepts, and mathematical relationships. The students are then tasked with assembling these elements into an argument to arrive at a conclusion on questions that tend to elicit incorrect intuitive responses. Data from calculus-based introductory physics courses will be presented, and implications for instruction will be discussed.