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

Abstract

Three experiments tracked participants’ eye-movements to examine the time course of comprehension of the dual meaning of counterfactuals, such as “if there had been oranges then there would have been pears.” Participants listened to conditionals while looking at images in the visual world paradigm, including an image of oranges and pears that corresponds to the counterfactual’s conjecture, and one of no oranges and no pears that corresponds to its presumed facts, to establish at what point in time they consider each one. The results revealed striking individual differences: some participants looked at the negative image and the affirmative one, and some only at the affirmative image. The first experiment showed that participants who looked at the negative image increased their fixation on it within half a second. The second experiment showed they do so even without explicit instructions, and the third showed they do so even for printed words.

The Role of Alternatives in Language

“…Kulakova and Nieuwland (2016a) review the literature on the processing of counterfactuals and conclude that while a dual linguistic representation of both p & q and ¬p & ¬q seems to be almost part of the definition of counterfactuals, convincing evidence for the synchronous availability of both representations is hard to come by. This conclusion indirectly supports our assumption that the findings by Orenes et al (2019) RT speak against a mandatory process. However, as we will see in the section Alternatives for All?…”

“…Evidence from individual variation (see section Alternatives for All? Individual Differences) is also informative about the mandatory vs. strategic nature of the activation process for negation alternatives: In an eyetracking study on counterfactuals using pictorial displays reported in Orenes et al (2019) RT , participants listened to sentences like If there had been oranges, there would have been pears, having to infer that, in fact, there are no oranges and no pears. Initially, that is within about half a second, a significant group of participants increased their looks to both the real-world alternative and to the counterfactual alternative, suggesting parallel activation.…”

“…Often, visual displays are not used for actually introducing alternatives but for testing what the mental representation of a listener might look like, for instance in Orenes et al (2019) RT and Braun and Biezma (2019) RT . The authors presented what they thought the participants' mental representation of alternatives might be in pictorial form or as words on the screen.…”

“…In the study by Orenes et al (2019) RT on counterfactuals, the focus on individual differences also was post-hoc and it was driven by the observation that confidence intervals by participants were much larger than those by items. As mentioned in the section The Time Course of the Activation of Alternatives During Processing, participants' looks to the picture representing the factual world (¬p&¬q) and to the picture representing the counterfactual world (p&q) started to rise quickly upon presentation of a counterfactual.…”

The Suppression of Inferences From Counterfactual Conditionals

“…Eye‐tracking studies also indicate they have detected both possibilities (e.g., Ferguson & Sanford, 2008; Ferguson, Sanford, & Leuthold, 2008; see also Nieuwland & Martin, 2012). For example, they look at an image corresponding to the presupposed facts more often when they hear the counterfactual than a factual conditional, and they look at an image corresponding to the conjecture equally often for both sorts of conditionals (e.g., Orenes, Garcia‐Madruga, Gomez‐Veiga, Espino, & Byrne, 2019). Accordingly, brain imaging fMRI studies show that counterfactuals activate areas related to conflict detection such as the medial prefrontal cortex (e.g., Kulakova, Aichhorn, Schurz, Kronbichler, & Perner, 2013; Van Hoeck et al, 2013).…”