Illusions in modal reasoning
Open Access
- 1 March 2000
- journal article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Memory & Cognition
- Vol. 28 (2), 282-294
- https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03213806
Abstract
According to the mental model theory, models represent what is true, but not what is false. One unexpected consequence is that certain inferences should have compelling, but invalid, conclusions. Three experiments corroborated the occurrence of such illusions in reasoning about possibilities. When problems had the heading "Only one of the premises is true," the participants considered the truth of each premise in turn, but neglected the fact that when one premise is true, the others are false. When two-premise problems had the heading "One of the premises is true and one is false," the participants still neglected the falsity of one of the premises. As predicted, however, the illusions were reduced when reasoners were told to check their conclusions against the constraint that only one of the premises was true. We discuss alternative explanations for illusory inferences and their implications for current theories of reasoning.Keywords
This publication has 12 references indexed in Scilit:
- 13 Mental models in deductive, modal, and probabilistic reasoningPublished by Elsevier BV ,1999
- A Model Theory of Modal ReasoningCognitive Science, 1998
- Illusory inferences about probabilitiesActa Psychologica, 1996
- Hypothesis testing in Wason's selection task: social exchange cheating detection or task understandingCognition, 1996
- Relevance theory explains the selection taskCognition, 1995
- Deduction as verbal reasoning.Psychological Review, 1995
- The locus of facilitation in the abstract selection taskThinking & Reasoning, 1995
- Focusing in wason's selection task: Content and instruction effectsThinking & Reasoning, 1995
- A theory of if: A lexical entry, reasoning program, and pragmatic principles.Psychological Review, 1991
- Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probabilityCognitive Psychology, 1973