Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-9pm4c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T11:47:06.541Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Initial Models in Conditionals: Evidence from Priming

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2014

Orlando Espino  and
Carlos Santamaría
Orlando Espino*
Affiliation:
Universidad de La Laguna. Tenerife, Spain
Carlos Santamaría
Affiliation:
Universidad de La Laguna. Tenerife, Spain
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Orlando Espino, Departamento de Psicología Cognitiva, Universidad de la Laguna, Campus de Guajara, 38205 – Tenerife(Spain). FAX: 34-22-317461. E-mail: oespinom@ull.es
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We examined the comprehension of different types of conditionals. We measured the reading time of sentences primed by different types of conditionals (Experiments 1 and 2). We found that the participants read not-p and not-q faster when it was primed by the conditional form p if q and they were slower to read p and q when it was primed by the conditional form p only if q. This effect disappeared in the second experiment, where the order of the elements was reversed (q and p and not-q and not-p). These results suggest that the conditional form p if q elicits an initial representation “from p to q” with two possibilities, while the conditional form p only if q elicits a reverse representation with only one possibility. The third experiment showed that there were effects of the order only for the conditional if p then q, which confirms the reverse representation hypothesis. We discuss the implications of these results for different theories of conditional comprehension.

Examinamos la comprensión de diferentes tipos de condicionales. Medimos el tiempo de lectura de frases facilitadas por diferentes tipos de condicionales (experimentos 1 y 2). Encontramos que los participantes leían no-p y no-q más rápidamente cuando era facilitada por la forma condicional p si q y que eran más lentos leyendo p y q cuando era facilitada por la forma condicional p sólo si q. Este efecto desapareció en el segundo experimento, donde el orden de los elementos se invirtió (q y p y no-q y no-p). Estos resultados sugieren que la forma del condicional p si q elicita una representación inicial “desde p a q” con dos posibilidades, mientras que la forma condicional p sólo si q elicita una representación inversa con una sola posibilidad. El tercer experimento mostró que había efectos de orden sólo para el condicional si p entonces q, lo cual confirma la hipótesis de la representación inversa. Se comentan las implicaciones de estos resultados para las diversas teorías de comprensión condicional.

Keywords

lexical conditional reasoningprimingsuppositional theorymental modelrazonamiento condicionalprimingteoría suposicionalmodelo mental
Type
Articles
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , May 2008 , pp. 36 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barrouillet, P., & Lecas, J. F. (1998). How can mental models account for contents effects in conditional reasoning? A developmental evidence. Cognition, 75, 237–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braine, M. D. S. (1978). On the relation between the natural logic of reasoning and standard logic. Psychological Review, 85, 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braine, M. D. S., & O'Brien., D. P. (1991). A theory of if: A lexical entry, reasoning program, and pragmatic principles. Psychological Review, 98, 182–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braine, M. D. S., & O'Brien., D. P. (1998). Mental Logic. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Espino, O., Santamaría, C., & García Madruga, J.A. (2000). The activation of the end-terms in syllogistic reasoning. Thinking & Reasoning, 6, 68–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, J. S. B. T. (1977). Linguistic factors in reasoning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 29, 297–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T. (1993). The mental model theory of conditional reasoning: Critical appraisal and revision. Cognition, 48, 1–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Evans, J. St. B. T., & Beck, M. A. (1981). Directionality and temporal factors in conditional reasoning. Current Psychological Research, 1, 111–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, J. S. B. T., Clibbens, J., & Rood, B. (1995). Bias in conditional inference: Implications for mental models and mental logic. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 48A, 644–670.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., Newstead, S. E., & Byrne, R. M. J. (1993). Human reasoning: The psychology of deduction. Hove, UK: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., & Over, D. E. (2004). If. Oxford University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., Over, D. E., & Handley, S. J. (2005). Suppositional, extensionality and conditionals: A critique of the mental model theory of Johnson-Laird and Byrne (2002). Psychological Review, 112, 1040–1052.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gernsbacher, M. A. (1990). Language comprehension as structure building. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grosset, N., & Barrouillet, P. (2003). On the nature of mental models of conditionals: The case of If, If then, and Only if. Thinking and Reasoning, 9, 289–384.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1995) Inference and mental models. In, Newstead, S.E. & Evans, St. J. B. T. (Eds.), Perspectives on thinking and reasoning: Essays in honour of Peter Wason (pp. 67–89). Hove, UK: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Byrne, R. M. J. (2002). Conditionals: A theory of meaning, pragmatics and inference. Psychological Review, 19, 646–678.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luckhardt, C. G., & Bechtel, W. (1994). How to do things with logic. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Oberauer, K., & Wilhelm, O. (2000). Effects of directionality in deductive reasoning: I. the comprehension of a single relational premises. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 26, 1702–1712.Google ScholarPubMed
O'Brien, D.P., Dias, M.G., & Roazzi, A. (1998). A case study in the mental-logic and mental-models debate: Conditional syllogisms. In Braine, M.D.S. & O'Brien, D.P. (Eds.), Mental logic (pp. 385–420). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Over, D.E., & St. Evans, J. B. T. (2003). The probability of conditionals: The psychological evidence. Mind and Language, 18, 340–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramsey, F.P. (1929/1990). General propositions and causality. In Mellor, D. H. (Ed.) Foundations: Essays in Philosophy, Logic, Mathematics and Economics. London: Humanities Press, pp. 145–163.Google Scholar
Rips, L. J. (1994). The psychology of proof: Deductive reasoning in human thinking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Santamaría, C., & Espino, O. (2002). Conditionals and directionality: On the meaning of If vs Only if. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55, 51–57.Google Scholar
Santamaría, C., Espino, O., & Byrne, R (2005). Counterfactual and semifactual conditionals prime alternative possibilities. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 31, 1149–1154.Google ScholarPubMed