Abstract Experimental argumentation research allows researchers to test normative predictions from argumentation theory. In the domain of argument quality, for instance, numerous studies have supported the prediction that high-quality arguments should lead to better claim acceptance than low-quality arguments. These studies also examined factors moderating this effect, such as text length, and cultural background of the receiver. The current experiment adds another factor: incongruity between arguments. By presenting participants with arguments and counterarguments, they were put in a circumstance of incongruity, leading to higher elaboration of arguments and, therefore, to sensitivity to argument quality. Such sensitivity was found to be absent for French participants in an earlier study, but present for Dutch participants. The current study examined whether such sensitivity occurred for both national samples under the circumstance of argument incongruity. Dutch and French students ( N  = 544) indicated their acceptance of claims followed by statistical evidence and normatively strong or weak expert evidence, each of which served as argument in some cases and as counterargument in others. Analyses showed that normatively strong expert evidence was more persuasive than normatively weak expert evidence for Dutch participants, but that evidence quality did not affect claim acceptance for French participants. Implications for a cultural explanation for the French result are discussed.

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ERIC and NCTE combined, in 1983, to produce a small, fifty-page booklet giving English teachers the no-nonsense lowdown on the use of computers for instruction.Its name was straightforward, Computers in the English Classroom , and its advice was traditional.After mentioning various drill and practice and record-keeping possibilities, the document informed us, with time-honored NCTE gentleness, that "the value of the computer lies in the fact that it provides one more tool for the teacher to use."It then made what seems to me a manifesto of sorts."[The computer] frees the teacher from certain mundane chores so that instructional time is better utilized."Isn't this the way most of us have always thought about computers, as mechanical servants which can take over "certain mundane chores" so that we can get to the higher-level stuff?When you think about it, the idea is not all that comforting.It lies at the heart of the scary theory that computers intended to replicate low-level skills may someday co-opt skills considerably above the "mundane-chores" category so that the servant becomes the master or, at the very least, the master finds himself tailoring and limiting his activities for the convenience of the servant.The concept of a "servant-master" relationship between computer and human being suggests an anthropomorphic view of computers which, I think, channels our attitudes and severely limits our options in using computers.What I call the "Replacement Fallacy," the belief that computers are most successful when they are most human, hems us in between