Dual-process theories come in many forms. They draw on the distinction between associative, heuri... more Dual-process theories come in many forms. They draw on the distinction between associative, heuristic, tacit, intuitive, or implicit processes (System 1) and rule-based, analytic, explicit processes (System 2). We present the results of contextual manipulations that have a bearing on the supposed primacy of System 1 (Stanovich & West, 2000). Experiment 1 showed that people who evaluated logically valid or invalid conditional inferences under a timing constraint (N = 56), showed a smaller effect of logical validity than did people who were not placed under a timing constraint (N = 44). Experiment 2 similarly showed that stressing the logical constraint that only inferences that follow necessarily are to be endorsed (N = 36) increased the size of the validity effect, as compared to that of participants (N = 33) given the standard instruction to make " logical " inferences. These findings concur with the thesis in dual-processing frameworks that " Rationality-2 processes " (Evans & Over, 1996), " test procedures " (Chater & Oaksford, 1999), or " conclusion validation processes " (Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 1991; Schroyens, Schaeken, & d'Ydewalle, 2001) serve to override the results of System 1 processes. Presently there is a growing consensus about the thesis that a distinction can be made between two types of rationality, or systems of reasoning (see, e.. Dual-process theories of reasoning draw on the distinction between, on the one hand, highly contextually dependent, associative, heuristic, tacit, intuitive, or implicit processes, which are holistic, automatic, experiential in nature and relatively undemanding of cognitive capacity and, on the other hand, contextually independent, rule-based, analytic, explicit processes, which are relatively slow and demanding of cognitive capacity. As regards the functional relation between the two Requests for reprints should be sent to Walter Schroyens,
This paper investigates the processing of conditional sentences and sentences with 'since&#x... more This paper investigates the processing of conditional sentences and sentences with 'since' in two respects. Firstly, we investigate the clausal implicature originating from the scale <since 'p, q'; if 'p, q'>. Secondly, we investigate how modals can affect the interpretation of these sentences. A reading time experiment is reported which involved these two factors. It appears that 'since' is processed fastest in a context in which the antecedent has been affirmed, whereas 'if' is processed fastest in a context with an uncertain antecedent. The use of modals can speed up or slow down the reading process. Modals help to speed up processing of sentences involving 'if' in a certain context and 'since' in an uncertain context. However, when modals are used with 'if' in an uncertain context or with 'since' in a certain context, they slow down processing of the relevant sentences. The results wi...
Abstract How do people tackle indeterminate spatial descriptions, that is those descriptions for ... more Abstract How do people tackle indeterminate spatial descriptions, that is those descriptions for which several representations are possible? Take for instance the two following statements: B is to the left of A, C is to the left of A. This description is indeterminate because it is compatible with at least two possibilities:(1) CBA;(2) BC A. Studies on human reasoning have shown that people tend to reduce the complexity of such indeterminate descriptions by representing only one possibility. Which one do people favour?
Two types of truth table task are used to examine people&amp;#x27;s mental representation of ... more Two types of truth table task are used to examine people&amp;#x27;s mental representation of conditionals. In two within-participants experiments, participants either receive the same task-type twice (Experiment 1) or are presented successively with both a possibilities task and a truth task (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 examines how people interpret the three-option possibilities task and whether they have a clear understanding
There is ample evidence that in classical truth table task experiments false antecedents are judg... more There is ample evidence that in classical truth table task experiments false antecedents are judged as “irrelevant”. Instead of interpreting this in support of a suppositional representation of conditionals, Schroyens (2010a, 2010b) attributes it to the induction problem: the impossibility of establishing the truth of a universal claim on the basis of a single case. In the first experiment a
Walter Schroyens and Walter Schaeken are supported in their research as senior research fellows o... more Walter Schroyens and Walter Schaeken are supported in their research as senior research fellows of the Flanders Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium, FWO). Reporting this work was in part funded by a foreign travel grand of the FWO awarded to W. Schroyens, for a stay at the ...
On montre que l'absence de distinction entre prédictions logiques et prédictions psychologiq... more On montre que l'absence de distinction entre prédictions logiques et prédictions psychologiques chez Evans, Handley et Over (2003) a donné naissance à de pseudo-arguments qui rendent la théorie des modèles mentaux (TMM) de Johnson-Laird & Byrne (2002) coupable par ...
There are two different reasoning mechanisms,for solving ‘if- then’-problems: one is based ,on li... more There are two different reasoning mechanisms,for solving ‘if- then’-problems: one is based ,on likelihood-estimates and is rather heuristic; the other one ,takes counterexamples ,into account and is analytic in nature. Based on the,difference in input of the two reasoning mechanisms,we found that the AC problem is mainly solved by using likelihood-information, whereas,the ,DA problem ,is rather ,solved ,using counterexample-information.
APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser c... more APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser configuration. - alerts user that their session is about to expire - display, print, save, export, and email selected records - get My ...
... Walter Schroyens and Walter Schaeken Internal Technical Report: ... Correspondence address:Wa... more ... Walter Schroyens and Walter Schaeken Internal Technical Report: ... Correspondence address:Walter Schroyens University of Leuven Department of Psychology Laboratory of Experimental Psychology Tiensestraat 102, B-3000 LEUVEN (Belgium). E-mail. ...
In a series of experiments, Bott and Noveck (2004) found that the computation of scalar inference... more In a series of experiments, Bott and Noveck (2004) found that the computation of scalar inferences, a variety of conversational implicature, caused a delay in response times. In order to determine what aspect of the inferential process that underlies scalar inferences caused this delay we extended their paradigm to three other kinds of inferences: free choice inferences, conditional perfection, and exhaustivity in 'it'-clefts. In contrast to scalar inferences, the computation of these three kinds of inferences facilitated response times. Following a suggestion made by Chemla and Bott (2014) we propose that the time it takes to compute a conversational implicature depends on the structural characteristics of the required alternatives.
We asked people to validate conditional inferences (e.g., "A, therefore C" with "i... more We asked people to validate conditional inferences (e.g., "A, therefore C" with "if A then C"). People are more likely to look for falsifications ("A and not-C") versus confirmations ("A and C") given a forced choice. Second, falsification rates are lower for logically valid versus invalid inferences. Logically valid inferences are inferences that follow necessarily. Experiment 1 (N = 96) shows that emphasising this logicality constraint increases falsification rates in the validation task and corroborates that validation-by-falsification increases logically correct inference evaluations. Experiment 2 (N = 41) corroborates the other way round that people who are more likely to make logically correct evaluations, show higher falsification performance in the validation task. The results support mental-models theory and suggest alternative theories similarly need to specify how people would go about looking for counterexamples. We proffer such a ...
An experimental study is reported which investigates the differences in interpretation between co... more An experimental study is reported which investigates the differences in interpretation between content conditionals (of various pragmatic types) and inferential conditionals. In a content conditional, the antecedent represents a requirement for the consequent to become true. In an inferential conditional, the antecedent functions as a premise and the consequent as the inferred conclusion from that premise. The linguistic difference between content and inferential conditionals is often neglected in reasoning experiments. This turns out to be unjustified, since we adduced evidence on the basis of a quantitative and a qualitative analysis that this difference has a manifest psychological relevance. For the inferential conditionals, participants appear to retrieve the order of events of the original content conditional on which it was based, before they start reasoning with it. The implications of this finding for reasoning research and linguistics will be discussed.
Reasoning with conditionals involving causal content is known to be affected by retrieval of alte... more Reasoning with conditionals involving causal content is known to be affected by retrieval of alternative and disabling conditions. Recent evidence indicates that besides the number of stored conditions, the relative strength of association of the alternative conditions with the consequent term is another important factor that affects the retrieval process. In this study we examined the effect of the strength
ABSTRACT Conventional implicatures are omnipresent in daily life communication but experimental r... more ABSTRACT Conventional implicatures are omnipresent in daily life communication but experimental research on this topic is sparse, especially research with children. The aim of this study was to investigate if eight- to twelve-year-old children spontaneously make the conventional implicature induced by but, so, and nevertheless in &amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;p but q&amp;amp;amp;amp;#39; sentences. Additionally, the study aimed to shed light on the cognitive effort required for these inferences by measuring working memory (WM) capacity. Our results show that children do make these inferences to a certain extent, but are sensitive to the content of the arguments. We found a significant effect of sentence type, but did not observe any developmental effect, nor any effect of WM: a higher age or WM capacity does not result in more pragmatic inferences.
There are two,accounts,explaining,how,background information,can ,affect the ,conditional ,reason... more There are two,accounts,explaining,how,background information,can ,affect the ,conditional ,reasoning performance: the probabilistic account and,the mental model,account. According to the mental,model,theory reasoners,retrieve ,and ,integrate ,counterexample information,to attain a conclusion. According to the probabilistic account reasoners base their judgments,on likelihood information. It is assumed,that reasoning by use of a mental,model,process requires more,working memory,resources than solving the inference by use of likelihood information.
Dual-process theories come in many forms. They draw on the distinction between associative, heuri... more Dual-process theories come in many forms. They draw on the distinction between associative, heuristic, tacit, intuitive, or implicit processes (System 1) and rule-based, analytic, explicit processes (System 2). We present the results of contextual manipulations that have a bearing on the supposed primacy of System 1 (Stanovich & West, 2000). Experiment 1 showed that people who evaluated logically valid or invalid conditional inferences under a timing constraint (N = 56), showed a smaller effect of logical validity than did people who were not placed under a timing constraint (N = 44). Experiment 2 similarly showed that stressing the logical constraint that only inferences that follow necessarily are to be endorsed (N = 36) increased the size of the validity effect, as compared to that of participants (N = 33) given the standard instruction to make " logical " inferences. These findings concur with the thesis in dual-processing frameworks that " Rationality-2 processes " (Evans & Over, 1996), " test procedures " (Chater & Oaksford, 1999), or " conclusion validation processes " (Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 1991; Schroyens, Schaeken, & d'Ydewalle, 2001) serve to override the results of System 1 processes. Presently there is a growing consensus about the thesis that a distinction can be made between two types of rationality, or systems of reasoning (see, e.. Dual-process theories of reasoning draw on the distinction between, on the one hand, highly contextually dependent, associative, heuristic, tacit, intuitive, or implicit processes, which are holistic, automatic, experiential in nature and relatively undemanding of cognitive capacity and, on the other hand, contextually independent, rule-based, analytic, explicit processes, which are relatively slow and demanding of cognitive capacity. As regards the functional relation between the two Requests for reprints should be sent to Walter Schroyens,
This paper investigates the processing of conditional sentences and sentences with 'since&#x... more This paper investigates the processing of conditional sentences and sentences with 'since' in two respects. Firstly, we investigate the clausal implicature originating from the scale <since 'p, q'; if 'p, q'>. Secondly, we investigate how modals can affect the interpretation of these sentences. A reading time experiment is reported which involved these two factors. It appears that 'since' is processed fastest in a context in which the antecedent has been affirmed, whereas 'if' is processed fastest in a context with an uncertain antecedent. The use of modals can speed up or slow down the reading process. Modals help to speed up processing of sentences involving 'if' in a certain context and 'since' in an uncertain context. However, when modals are used with 'if' in an uncertain context or with 'since' in a certain context, they slow down processing of the relevant sentences. The results wi...
Abstract How do people tackle indeterminate spatial descriptions, that is those descriptions for ... more Abstract How do people tackle indeterminate spatial descriptions, that is those descriptions for which several representations are possible? Take for instance the two following statements: B is to the left of A, C is to the left of A. This description is indeterminate because it is compatible with at least two possibilities:(1) CBA;(2) BC A. Studies on human reasoning have shown that people tend to reduce the complexity of such indeterminate descriptions by representing only one possibility. Which one do people favour?
Two types of truth table task are used to examine people&amp;#x27;s mental representation of ... more Two types of truth table task are used to examine people&amp;#x27;s mental representation of conditionals. In two within-participants experiments, participants either receive the same task-type twice (Experiment 1) or are presented successively with both a possibilities task and a truth task (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 examines how people interpret the three-option possibilities task and whether they have a clear understanding
There is ample evidence that in classical truth table task experiments false antecedents are judg... more There is ample evidence that in classical truth table task experiments false antecedents are judged as “irrelevant”. Instead of interpreting this in support of a suppositional representation of conditionals, Schroyens (2010a, 2010b) attributes it to the induction problem: the impossibility of establishing the truth of a universal claim on the basis of a single case. In the first experiment a
Walter Schroyens and Walter Schaeken are supported in their research as senior research fellows o... more Walter Schroyens and Walter Schaeken are supported in their research as senior research fellows of the Flanders Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium, FWO). Reporting this work was in part funded by a foreign travel grand of the FWO awarded to W. Schroyens, for a stay at the ...
On montre que l'absence de distinction entre prédictions logiques et prédictions psychologiq... more On montre que l'absence de distinction entre prédictions logiques et prédictions psychologiques chez Evans, Handley et Over (2003) a donné naissance à de pseudo-arguments qui rendent la théorie des modèles mentaux (TMM) de Johnson-Laird & Byrne (2002) coupable par ...
There are two different reasoning mechanisms,for solving ‘if- then’-problems: one is based ,on li... more There are two different reasoning mechanisms,for solving ‘if- then’-problems: one is based ,on likelihood-estimates and is rather heuristic; the other one ,takes counterexamples ,into account and is analytic in nature. Based on the,difference in input of the two reasoning mechanisms,we found that the AC problem is mainly solved by using likelihood-information, whereas,the ,DA problem ,is rather ,solved ,using counterexample-information.
APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser c... more APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser configuration. - alerts user that their session is about to expire - display, print, save, export, and email selected records - get My ...
... Walter Schroyens and Walter Schaeken Internal Technical Report: ... Correspondence address:Wa... more ... Walter Schroyens and Walter Schaeken Internal Technical Report: ... Correspondence address:Walter Schroyens University of Leuven Department of Psychology Laboratory of Experimental Psychology Tiensestraat 102, B-3000 LEUVEN (Belgium). E-mail. ...
In a series of experiments, Bott and Noveck (2004) found that the computation of scalar inference... more In a series of experiments, Bott and Noveck (2004) found that the computation of scalar inferences, a variety of conversational implicature, caused a delay in response times. In order to determine what aspect of the inferential process that underlies scalar inferences caused this delay we extended their paradigm to three other kinds of inferences: free choice inferences, conditional perfection, and exhaustivity in 'it'-clefts. In contrast to scalar inferences, the computation of these three kinds of inferences facilitated response times. Following a suggestion made by Chemla and Bott (2014) we propose that the time it takes to compute a conversational implicature depends on the structural characteristics of the required alternatives.
We asked people to validate conditional inferences (e.g., "A, therefore C" with "i... more We asked people to validate conditional inferences (e.g., "A, therefore C" with "if A then C"). People are more likely to look for falsifications ("A and not-C") versus confirmations ("A and C") given a forced choice. Second, falsification rates are lower for logically valid versus invalid inferences. Logically valid inferences are inferences that follow necessarily. Experiment 1 (N = 96) shows that emphasising this logicality constraint increases falsification rates in the validation task and corroborates that validation-by-falsification increases logically correct inference evaluations. Experiment 2 (N = 41) corroborates the other way round that people who are more likely to make logically correct evaluations, show higher falsification performance in the validation task. The results support mental-models theory and suggest alternative theories similarly need to specify how people would go about looking for counterexamples. We proffer such a ...
An experimental study is reported which investigates the differences in interpretation between co... more An experimental study is reported which investigates the differences in interpretation between content conditionals (of various pragmatic types) and inferential conditionals. In a content conditional, the antecedent represents a requirement for the consequent to become true. In an inferential conditional, the antecedent functions as a premise and the consequent as the inferred conclusion from that premise. The linguistic difference between content and inferential conditionals is often neglected in reasoning experiments. This turns out to be unjustified, since we adduced evidence on the basis of a quantitative and a qualitative analysis that this difference has a manifest psychological relevance. For the inferential conditionals, participants appear to retrieve the order of events of the original content conditional on which it was based, before they start reasoning with it. The implications of this finding for reasoning research and linguistics will be discussed.
Reasoning with conditionals involving causal content is known to be affected by retrieval of alte... more Reasoning with conditionals involving causal content is known to be affected by retrieval of alternative and disabling conditions. Recent evidence indicates that besides the number of stored conditions, the relative strength of association of the alternative conditions with the consequent term is another important factor that affects the retrieval process. In this study we examined the effect of the strength
ABSTRACT Conventional implicatures are omnipresent in daily life communication but experimental r... more ABSTRACT Conventional implicatures are omnipresent in daily life communication but experimental research on this topic is sparse, especially research with children. The aim of this study was to investigate if eight- to twelve-year-old children spontaneously make the conventional implicature induced by but, so, and nevertheless in &amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;p but q&amp;amp;amp;amp;#39; sentences. Additionally, the study aimed to shed light on the cognitive effort required for these inferences by measuring working memory (WM) capacity. Our results show that children do make these inferences to a certain extent, but are sensitive to the content of the arguments. We found a significant effect of sentence type, but did not observe any developmental effect, nor any effect of WM: a higher age or WM capacity does not result in more pragmatic inferences.
There are two,accounts,explaining,how,background information,can ,affect the ,conditional ,reason... more There are two,accounts,explaining,how,background information,can ,affect the ,conditional ,reasoning performance: the probabilistic account and,the mental model,account. According to the mental,model,theory reasoners,retrieve ,and ,integrate ,counterexample information,to attain a conclusion. According to the probabilistic account reasoners base their judgments,on likelihood information. It is assumed,that reasoning by use of a mental,model,process requires more,working memory,resources than solving the inference by use of likelihood information.
Any theory that tries to describe human reasoning with one single-layered process will remain inc... more Any theory that tries to describe human reasoning with one single-layered process will remain incomplete. This paper shows that the reasoning process consists of multiple layers of inference, each relying on at least one inference process. The overall understanding of human reasoning requires an experience and context driven combination of top-down theoretical frameworks and bottom-up acquired knowledge and principles. With this paper we aim to advance this more comprehensive approach to conditional reasoning.
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