Student-centered instruction can lead to strong gains in physics learning. However, even after targeted instruction, many students still struggle to systematically analyze unfamiliar situations. We have been identifying sequences of questions that allow for an in-depth examination of inconsistencies in student reasoning approaches. On these sequences, many students demonstrate that they possess the abilities to perform the required reasoning, yet they fail to apply this reasoning to arrive at a

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... correct answer. In certain contexts, students tend to "abandon" suitable formal reasoning in favor of reasoning that was (perhaps) more intuitively appealing at that moment. In other cases, erroneous student reasoning approaches can be attributed to the relative salience of specific features of the problem. We present results from one sequence revealing inconsistencies in student reasoning in the context of capacitors. This sequence was administered in an introductory course in which Tutorials in Introductory Physics were implemented as interactive lectures.