Theories of Conditional Reasoning: A Developmental Examination of Competing Hypotheses.

Children and adolescents were presented with problems that contained deontic (i.e., if action p is taken, then precondition q must be met) or causal (i.e., if event p occurs, then event q will transpire) conditionals and that varied in the ease with which alternative antecedents could be activated. Results showed that inferences were linked to the availability of alternative antecedents and the generation of "disabling" conditions (claims that the conditionals were false under specific circumstances). Age-related developments were found only on problems involving indeterminate inferences. Correlations among inferences differed for children and adolescents. The findings provide stronger support for domain-general theories than for domain-specific theories of reasoning and suggest, under some conditions, age-related changes in the roles of implicit and explicit processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reasoning counterfactually: Making inferences about things that didn't happen.

The authors investigated the relationship between reasoners' understanding of subjunctive conditionals (e.g., if p had happened, then q would have happened) and the inferences they were prepared to endorse. Reasoners who made a counterfactual interpretation of subjunctive statements (i.e., they judged the statement to imply that p and q did not happen) endorsed different inferences than those who did not. Those who made a counterfactual interpretation were more likely to (a)judge the situation in which p and q occurred to be inconsistent with the conditional statement and (b) make negative inferences such as modus tollens (i.e., – q therefore – p ). These findings occurred with familiar and unfamiliar content, affirmative and negative conditionals, and conditional and biconditional relations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hypothetical and certain inferences from conditional arguments read in texts.

In 3 experiments, affirmative and hypothetical probes were presented after narrative texts containing conditional arguments. According to the data, readers represented modus ponens deductions as certain, except when it was only a weakly necessary cause of a given effect. They represented any logically invalid inferences resulting from affirming the conditional consequent as hypothetical, except when it was the effect of strongly sufficient cause. Accordingly, readers must be processing conditional syntax as an asymmetric constraint. However, the underlying causal knowledge can be sufficient either to discredit or warrant the inferences. Thus according to the theory of natural logic, readers can draw formal deductions and be convinced of their necessity. This provides further evidence that readers can represent their inferences as hypothetical (N. Campion, 2004). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Accessing Distant Premise Information: How Memory Feeds Reasoning.

According to current psychological models of deduction, people can draw inferences on the basis of information that they receive from different sources at different times. In 3 reading-comprehension experiments, the authors demonstrated that premises that appear far apart in a text (distant) are not accessed and are therefore not used as a basis for logical inferences (Experiment 1), unless the premises are reinstated by a contextual cue (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, the authors investigated whether these deductions are then integrated into the reader's situation model of the text. The results are interpreted in terms of a collaboration between memory-based text processing and higher level schema-driven logical reasoning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Empathy neglect: Reconciling the spotlight effect and the correspondence bias.

When people commit an embarrassing blunder, they typically overestimate how harshly they will be judged by others. This tendency can seem to fly in the face of research on the correspondence bias, which has established that observers are, in fact, quite likely to draw harsh dispositional inferences about others. These seemingly inconsistent literatures are reconciled by showing that actors typically neglect to consider the extent to which observers will moderate their correspondent inferences when they can easily adopt an actor's perspective or imagine being in his or her shoes. These results help to explain why actors can overestimate the strength of observers' dispositional inferences even when, as the literature on the correspondence bias attests, observers are notoriously prone to drawing those very inferences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"How automatic are social judgments?" Correction to Winter, Uleman, and Cunniff.

Reports an error in "How automatic are social judgments" by Laraine Winter, James S. Uleman and Cathryn Cunniff (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1985[Oct], Vol 49[4], 904-917). There are errors in the labeling of the ordinates of the figures. The correct labeling is provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1986-03720-001.) Adapted the encoding-specificity paradigm developed by D. Thomson and E. Tulving (see record 1971-03487-001) to test 3 operational indicants of automatism (absence of intention, of interference from other mental activity, and of awareness). Recruited for a digit-recall study, 95 undergraduate students read sentences describing actions during the retention interval of either an easy or a difficult digit-recall task. Later, sentence recall was cued by (a) disposition cues, (b) strong semantic associates to the sentence actor, or (c) words representing the gist of the sentence, or (d) sentence recall was not cued. Awareness was measured immediately after the last sentence was read. Disposition-cued recall was higher than (b) or (d) and was unaffected by digit recall difficulty. Awareness of making dispositional inferences was only weakly correlated with disposition-cued recall. Results suggest that disposition inferences occurred at encoding, without intention, without interference by differential drain on processing capacity, and with little awareness. Thus, making dispositional inferences seems to be largely, but not entirely, automatic. (50 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditional reasoning with inducements and advice

In an earlier study of conditional reasoning, Newstead et al. [Newstead, S.E., Ellis, C.E., Evans, J.St.B.T., Dennis, I., (1997). Conditional reasoning with realistic material. Thinking and Reasoning 3, 49-96] found that people drew more inferences from conditionals framed as inducements (threats and promises) than from conditionals phrased as advice (tips and warnings). The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that this difference arose from the fact that the speaker of an inducement is normally seen to have control over the consequent event whereas the giver of advice does not. In the experiment reported here, inducement and advice conditionals were constructed in brief contexts such that in either case the speaker could be seen to have high or low control. Participants drew many more conditional inferences of all kinds for high control than for low control conditionals in either context. A second finding of interest was that participants drew many more forward (antecedent to consequent) inferences than backward inferences with these kinds of realistic conditionals.     

Perspectives of probabilistic inferences: Reinforcement learning and an adaptive network compared.

The assumption that people possess a strategy repertoire for inferences has been raised repeatedly. The strategy selection learning theory specifies how people select strategies from this repertoire. The theory assumes that individuals select strategies proportional to their subjective expectations of how well the strategies solve particular problems; such expectations are assumed to be updated by reinforcement learning. The theory is compared with an adaptive network model that assumes people make inferences by integrating information according to a connectionist network. The network's weights are modified by error correction learning. The theories were tested against each other in 2 experimental studies. Study 1 showed that people substantially improved their inferences through feedback, which was appropriately predicted by the strategy selection learning theory. Study 2 examined a dynamic environment in which the strategies' performances changed. In this situation a quick adaptation to the new situation was not observed; rather, individuals got stuck on the strategy they had successfully applied previously. This "inertia effect" was most strongly predicted by the strategy selection learning theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Biomechanical analysis of masticatory system configuration in Neandertals and Inuits

Johnson-Laird and Byrne (1991) present a theory of conditional inference based upon the manipulation of mental models. In the present paper, the theory is critically examined with regard to its ability to account for psychological data, principally with respect to the rate at which people draw the four basic inferences of modus ponens (MP), denial of the antecedent (DA), affirmation of the consequent (AC) and modus tollens (MT). It is argued first that the theory is unclear in its definition and in particular with regard to predictions of problem difficulty. Clarification and specification of principles are consequently provided here. Next, it is argued that there are a number of phenomena in the conditional reasoning literature for which the theory cannot account in its present form. Specifically, (a) the relatively frequency of DA and AC inferences on affirmative conditional is not as predicted by the theory, (b) differences occur between inferences on if then and only if rules beyond the capacity of the theory to explain and (c) there is no account of the "negative conclusion bias" observed when negated components are introduced into the rules. A number of revisions to the mental model theory of conditional reasoning are proposed in order to account for these findings.     

Propositional reasoning by model?

Two theories of propositional deductive reasoning are considered: the mental models of P. N. Johnson-Laird et al (see PA, 79:41765) and the mental logic of M. D. Braine (1994). The model theory is said to account for practically all of the known phenomena of deductive propositional reasoning, offer a general theory of conditionals, account for the most important aspects of Braine's theory, and predict new phenomena that rule theories cannot explain. It is argued that (1) the model theory is flawed in a way that is difficult to overcome, (2) conditionals are seriously misrepresented, (3) the algorithms proposed to implement it either allow invalid inferences or are psychologically useless, (4) Braine's theory accounts for all of the new phenomena worth considering, and (5) the model theory can predict Braine's results only at the cost of self-refutation. It is concluded that the mental model theory of propositional reasoning offers no reason to reject the program of mental logic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

SSL: A Theory of How People Learn to Select Strategies.

The assumption that people possess a repertoire of strategies to solve the inference problems they face has been raised repeatedly. However, a computational model specifying how people select strategies from their repertoire is still lacking. The proposed strategy selection learning (SSL) theory predicts a strategy selection process on the basis of reinforcement learning. The theory assumes that individuals develop subjective expectations for the strategies they have and select strategies proportional to their expectations, which are then updated on the basis of subsequent experience. The learning assumption was supported in 4 experimental studies. Participants substantially improved their inferences through feedback. In all 4 studies, the best-performing strategy from the participants' repertoires most accurately predicted the inferences after sufficient learning opportunities. When testing SSL against 3 models representing extensions of SSL and against an exemplar model assuming a memory-based inference process, the authors found that SSL predicted the inferences most accurately. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strategic processing during comprehension.

This study addresses 3 questions: How flexible are readers when reading strategically? How is strategic processing affected by properties of the text? and Do some strategies lead to better text retention than others? Participants read short narratives and thought aloud with an instruction to either explain, predict, associate, or understand. The think-aloud protocols were used to predict sentence reading times for other participants who read silently with the same strategies. The results indicated that readers are capable of strategically controlling the inferences that they generate. However, strategic control comes at some cost in that it limits the resources devoted to other inferences. Furthermore, strategic processing is heavily constrained by a text. Text-based explanations occurred when there was an identifiable causal antecedent in the prior text. Knowledge-based inferences occurred when there were no antecedents and when new characters and objects were introduced. These effects occurred across reading strategies. Reading to explain led to better memory, but only when reading silently. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Naive theories of intelligence and the role of processing fluency in perceived comprehension.

Previous research overwhelmingly suggests that feelings of ease people experience while processing information lead them to infer that their comprehension is high, whereas feelings of difficulty lead them to infer that their comprehension is low. However, the inferences people draw from their experiences of processing fluency should also vary in accordance with their naive theories about why new information might be easy or difficult to process. Five experiments that involved reading novel texts showed that participants who view intelligence as a fixed attribute, and who tend to interpret experiences of processing difficulty as an indication that they are reaching the limits of their ability, reported lower levels of comprehension as fluency decreased. In contrast, participants who view intelligence as a malleable attribute that develops through effort, and who do not tend to interpret experiences of processing difficulty as pertaining to some innate ability, did not report lower levels of comprehension as fluency decreased. In fact, when these participants were particularly likely to view effort as leading to increased mastery, decreases in fluency led them to report higher levels of comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Judgments of Risk Frequencies: Tests of Possible Cognitive Mechanisms.

How do people judge which of 2 risks claims more lives per year? The authors specified 4 candidate mechanisms and tested them against people's judgments in 3 risk environments. Two mechanisms, availability by recall and regressed frequency, conformed best to people's choices. The same mechanisms also accounted well for the mapping accuracy of estimates of absolute risk frequencies. Their nearly indistinguishable level of performance is remarkable given their different assumptions about the underlying cognitive processes and the fact that they give rise to different expectations regarding the accuracy of people's inferences. The authors discuss this seeming paradox, the lack of impact of financial incentives on judgmental accuracy, and the dominant interpretation of inaccurate inferences in terms of biased information processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The negated conditional: A litmus test for the suppositional conditional?

Under the suppositional account of conditionals, when people think about a conditional assertion, "if p then q," they engage in a mental simulation in which they imagine p holds and evaluate the probability that q holds under this supposition. One implication of this account is that belief in a conditional equates to conditional probability [P(q/p)]. In this paper, the authors examine a further implication of this analysis with respect to the wide-scope negation of conditional assertions, "it is not the case that if p then q." Under the suppositional account, nothing categorically follows from the negation of a conditional, other than a second conditional, "if p then not-q." In contrast, according to the mental model theory, a negated conditional is consistent only with the determinate state of affairs, p and not-q. In 4 experiments, the authors compare the contrasting predictions that arise from each of these accounts. The findings are consistent with the suppositional theory but are incongruent with the mental model theory of conditionals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Counterfactual and Semifactual Conditionals Prime Alternative Possibilities.

The authors examined in 3 experiments the comprehension of counterfactuals, such as "If it had rained, the plants would have bloomed," and semifactuals, such as "Even if it had rained, the plants would have bloomed," compared with indicative conditionals, "If it rained, the plants bloomed." The first experiment showed that people read the negative conjunction, "not p and not q" faster when it was primed by a counterfactual than when it was primed by an indicative conditional. They read the affirmative conjunction, "p and q" equally quickly when it was primed by either conditional. The 2nd experiment showed that people read the negated-antecedent conjunction, "not p and q" faster when it was primed by a semifactual conditional. The 3rd experiment corroborated these results in a direct comparison of counterfactuals and semifactuals. The authors discuss the implications of the results for the mental representations of different conditionals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When stereotypes get in the way: Stereotypes obstruct stereotype-inconsistent trait inferences.

There is a growing body of evidence indicating that people spontaneously make trait inferences while observing the behavior of others. The present article reports a series of 5 experiments that examined the influence of stereotypes on the spontaneous inference of traits. Results consistently showed weaker spontaneous trait inferences for stereotype-inconsistent behavioral information than for stereotype-consistent and stereotype-neutral information. Taken together, the current results suggest that specific spontaneous trait inferences become obstructed by inhibitory processes when behavior is inconsistent with an already activated stereotype. These findings are discussed in relation to stereotype maintenance processes and recent models of attribution in social judgment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)