We compared reasoners' inferences from conditionals based on possibilities in the present or the past (e.g., "If Linda had been in Dublin then Cathy would have been in Galway") with their inferences based on facts in the present or the past (e.g., "If Linda was in Dublin then Cathy was in Galway"). We propose that people construct a richer representation of conditionals that deal with possibilities rather than facts: Their models make explicit not only the suppositional case, in which Linda is in Dublin and Cathy is in Galway, but also the presupposed case, in which Linda is not in Dublin and Cathy is not in Galway.Wereport the results offour experiments that corroborate this model theory. The experiments show that reasoners make more inferences from conditionals based on possibilities rather than on facts when the inferences depend on the presupposed case. The results also show that reasoners generate different situations to verify and falsify conditionals based on possibilities and facts.Everyday reasoning is concerned not just with inferences about facts but also with inferences about possibilities. Our aim in this paper is to develop and test a psychological theory of reasoning with conditionals based not only on facts but also on possibilities. We will examine conditionals that deal with current facts, such as IfLinda is in Dublin then Cathy is in Galway.(l) and we will compare them with conditionals that deal with non factual or hypothetical states of affairs such as present possibilities (that could happen given the actual state of the world), such as IfLinda were in Dublin then Cathy would be in Galway. (2)We will also examine conditionals that deal with past facts, such as IfLinda was in Dublin then Cathy was in Galway. (3)We thank Vittorio Girotto, Simon Handley, Phil Johnson-Laird, Mark Keane, Mac MacLachlan, Alberto Mazzocco, David O'Brien, Shane O'Mara, David Over, and Valerie Thompson for their helpful comments on the research. We are grateful to Rachel McCloy for collecting and analyzing the data for the second experiment, and to the Dublin University Arts and Social Sciences Benefactions fund for support to do so. The results of some of the experiments were reported at various conferences, including the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society in Atlanta in 1994 and the Fifth International Colloquium on Cognitive Science in San Sebastian, Spain, in 1997. Correspondence should be addressed to R. M. 1. Byrne , Jackson, 1991; Lewis, 1973;Stalnaker, 1968) and linguistics (e.g., Dudman, 1988;Isard, 1974), as well as artificial intelligence (e.g., Ginsberg, 1986) and psychology (e.g., Johnson-Laird, 1986;Kahneman & Miller, 1986). Conditionals based on present possibilities, such as Example 2, which we will call nonfactual conditionals, have attracted less attention, but our points apply equally to both counterfactual and nonfactual conditionals.Early psychological interest in counterfactual conditionals focused on aspects of memory and comprehension (e.g., Carpenter, 1973;Fillenbau...
When people think about what might have been, they undo an outcome by changing events in regular ways. Suppose two contestants could win £1,000 if they picked the same color card; the first picks black, the second red, and they lose. The temporality effect refers to the tendency to think they would have won if the second player had picked black. Individuals also think that the second player will experience more guilt and be blamed more by the first, We report the results of five experiments that examine the nature of this effect. The first three experiments examine the temporality effect in scenarios in which the game is stopped after the first contestant's card selection because of a technical hitch, and then is restarted. When the first player picks a different card, the temporality effect is eliminated, for scenarios based on implicit and explicit negation and for good outcomes. When the first player picks the same card, the temporality effect occurs in each of these situations. The second two experiments show that it depends on the order of events in the world, not their descriptive order: It occurs for scenarios without preconceptions about normal descriptive order; it occurs whether the second event is mentioned in second place or first, The results are consistent with the idea that the temporality effect arises because the first event is presupposed and so it is immutable; and the elimination of the temporality effect arises because the availability of a counterfactual alternative to the first event creates an opposing tendency to mutate it. Wesketch a putative account ofthese effects based on characteristics of the mental models people construct when they think counterfactually.Many everyday thoughts rely on imaginative skills, especially when people think about how the past could have been different. These counterfactual suppositions can be close to the actual situation, for example, If! had taken the side road, I would have avoided the traffic jam. (I)
We investigated which item subsets of the Vineland-II can discriminate low-functioning preschoolers with ASD from matched peers with other neurodevelopmental disorders, using a regression analysis derived from a normative sample to account for cognitive and linguistic competencies. At variance with the typical profile, a pattern with Communication more impaired than Socialization was observed. The source of the frequently reported Socialization delay in ASD appears to be in Playing and Imitating skills only, not in other social adaptive behavior skills. The combination of item subsets Playing, Following instructions, Beginning to talk, and Speech skills provided the best discrimination between the two clinical groups. Evaluation of the Vineland-II score on item content categories is a useful procedure for a more efficient clinical description.
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