Understanding Counterfactuality: A Review of Experimental Evidence for the Dual Meaning of Counterfactuals

Abstract

Cognitive and linguistic theories of counterfactual language comprehension assume that counterfactuals convey a dual meaning. Subjunctive‐counterfactual conditionals (e.g., ‘If Tom had studied hard, he would have passed the test’) express a supposition while implying the factual state of affairs (Tom has not studied hard and failed). The question of how counterfactual dual meaning plays out during language processing is currently gaining interest in psycholinguistics. Whereas numerous studies using offline measures of language processing consistently support counterfactual dual meaning, evidence coming from online studies is less conclusive. Here, we review the available studies that examine online counterfactual language comprehension through behavioural measurement (self‐paced reading times, eye‐tracking) and neuroimaging (electroencephalography, functional magnetic resonance imaging). While we argue that these studies do not offer direct evidence for the online computation of counterfactual dual meaning, they provide valuable information about the way counterfactual meaning unfolds in time and influences successive information processing. Further advances in research on counterfactual comprehension require more specific predictions about how counterfactual dual meaning impacts incremental sentence processing.

Pragmatic skills predict online counterfactual comprehension: Evidence from the N400

“…It requires the rapid incorporation of subjunctive mood so that the comprehender can adjust his or her knowledge-based expectations. By marking the antecedent as counterfactual, subjunctive mood facilitates counterfactual continuations, possibly by lowering expectations of factually true continuations (Stewart et al, 2009 ; for a review, see Kulakova & Nieuwland, 2016 ). This lowering of expectations should lead to a larger N400 for a word that is consistent with real-world knowledge while not increasing the expectation of words that are both false and unrelated to the context (for a discussion, see Nieuwland, 2016 ).…”

How children and adults keep track of real information when thinking counterfactually

“…The study of counterfactual reasoning in children has not been driven by contrasting different theories (see [ 12 , 14 ]). One reason could be that the main theories of conditional reasoning agree about the dual meaning of counterfactuals [ 28 ]. Thus, for the mental model theory, each possibility is represented as a mental model: an iconic representation of a situation that captures its basic structure.…”

The Comprehension of Counterfactual Conditionals: Evidence From Eye-Tracking in the Visual World Paradigm

“…The results suggest that people represent both possibilities. But on the other hand, false counterfactuals elicit more brain activity than true ones, which may indicate the activation of only the conjecture (e.g., Nieuwland and Martin, 2012; see also Nieuwland, 2013; Kulakova and Nieuwland, 2016a,b). Accordingly, some theorists have proposed that people understand a counterfactual by considering their belief only in the imagined alternative to reality and they do so by simulating only the conjecture (e.g., Evans and Over, 2004; Evans, 2007).…”