119 research outputs found
The interpretation of the concepts ânecessityâ and âsufficiencyâ in forward unicausal relations
La nĂ©cessitĂ© et la suffisance sont deux concepts centraux de la littĂ©rature consacrĂ©e au raisonnement causal. Trois expĂ©riences analysant la maniĂšre quâont les individus de comprendre ces deux concepts sont exposĂ©es dans cet article. Les rĂ©sultats indiquent que la nĂ©cessitĂ© est une notion plus complexe que celle de suffisance. Pour la suffisance, les sujets vĂ©rifient seulement si la cause est suivie de lâeffet, alors que pour la nĂ©cessitĂ©, deux possibilitĂ©s peuvent ĂȘtre examinĂ©es:âla cause prĂ©cĂšde-t-elle toujours lâeffet?âet âlâeffet peut-il apparaĂźtre sans la cause ?â. Plus important encore, ces deux concepts manifestent une structure diffĂ©rente: la nĂ©cessitĂ© est considĂ©rĂ©e comme une propriĂ©tĂ© de type tout ou rien alors que la suffisance est vue comme une propriĂ©tĂ© plus graduelle. Les rĂ©sultats soulignent lâutilitĂ© dâune opĂ©rationnalisation appropriĂ©e afin de mesurer la nĂ©cessitĂ© et la suffisance telles quâelles sont perçues par les individus.Necessity and sufficiency are two central concepts in the literature on causal reasoning. Three experiments are reported that investigate how people understand these two concepts. It is found that necessity is more a complex notion than the notion of sufficiency. For sufficiency, people only verify whether the cause is always followed by the effect, whereas for necessity, there are two possibilities that can be verified: âdoes the cause always precede the effectâ and âcan the effect occur without the causeâ. More importantly, it is found that both concepts have a different structure: necessity is considered as an all-or-none property whereas sufficiency is a more liberal characteristic. The present findings highlight the need for an appropriate operationalisation for measuring the perceived necessity and sufficiency of given cause-effect relations
The interpretation of the concepts ânecessityâ and âsufficiencyâ in forward unicausal relations
La nĂ©cessitĂ© et la suffisance sont deux concepts centraux de la littĂ©rature consacrĂ©e au raisonnement causal. Trois expĂ©riences analysant la maniĂšre quâont les individus de comprendre ces deux concepts sont exposĂ©es dans cet article. Les rĂ©sultats indiquent que la nĂ©cessitĂ© est une notion plus complexe que celle de suffisance. Pour la suffisance, les sujets vĂ©rifient seulement si la cause est suivie de lâeffet, alors que pour la nĂ©cessitĂ©, deux possibilitĂ©s peuvent ĂȘtre examinĂ©es:âla cause prĂ©cĂšde-t-elle toujours lâeffet?âet âlâeffet peut-il apparaĂźtre sans la cause ?â. Plus important encore, ces deux concepts manifestent une structure diffĂ©rente: la nĂ©cessitĂ© est considĂ©rĂ©e comme une propriĂ©tĂ© de type tout ou rien alors que la suffisance est vue comme une propriĂ©tĂ© plus graduelle. Les rĂ©sultats soulignent lâutilitĂ© dâune opĂ©rationnalisation appropriĂ©e afin de mesurer la nĂ©cessitĂ© et la suffisance telles quâelles sont perçues par les individus.Necessity and sufficiency are two central concepts in the literature on causal reasoning. Three experiments are reported that investigate how people understand these two concepts. It is found that necessity is more a complex notion than the notion of sufficiency. For sufficiency, people only verify whether the cause is always followed by the effect, whereas for necessity, there are two possibilities that can be verified: âdoes the cause always precede the effectâ and âcan the effect occur without the causeâ. More importantly, it is found that both concepts have a different structure: necessity is considered as an all-or-none property whereas sufficiency is a more liberal characteristic. The present findings highlight the need for an appropriate operationalisation for measuring the perceived necessity and sufficiency of given cause-effect relations
Development of Quantitative and Temporal Scalar Implicatures in a Felicity Judgment Task
Experimental investigations into childrenâs interpretation of scalar terms show that children have difficulties with scalar implicatures in tasks. In contrast with adults, they are for instance not able to derive the pragmatic interpretation that âsomeâ means ânot allâ (Noveck, 2001; Papafragou and Musolino, 2003). However, there is also substantial experimental evidence that children are not incapable of drawing scalar inferences and that they are aware of the pragmatic potential of scalar expressions. In these kinds of studies, the prime interest is to discover what conditions facilitate implicature production for children. One of the factors that seem to be difficult for children is the generation of the scalar alternative. In a Felicity Judgment Task (FJT) the alternative is given. Participants are presented with a pair of utterances and asked to choose the most felicitous description. In such a task, even 5-year-old children are reported to show a very good performance. Our study wants to build on this tradition, by using a FJT where not only âsome-allâ choices are given, but also âsome-manyâ and âmany-all.â In combination with a manipulation of the number of successes/failures in the stories, this enabled us to construct control, critical and ambiguous items. We compared the performance of 59 5-year-old children with that of 34 11-year-old children. The results indicated that performance of both age groups was clearly above chance, replicating previous findings. However, for the 5-year-old children, the critical and ambiguous items were more difficult than the control items and they also performed worse on these two types of items than the 11-year-old children. Interestingly with respect to the issue of scalar diversity, the 11-year-old children were also presented temporal items, which turned out to be more difficult than the quantitative ones
The Understanding of Scalar Implicatures in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Dichotomized Responses to Violations of Informativeness
This study investigated the understanding of underinformative sentences like âSome elephants have trunksâ by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The scalar term âsomeâ can be interpreted pragmatically, âNot all elephants have trunks,â or logically, âSome and possibly all elephants have trunks.â Literature indicates that adults with ASD show no real difficulty in interpreting scalar implicatures, i.e., they often interpret them pragmatically, as controls do. This contrasts with the traditional claim of difficulties of people with ASD in other pragmatic domains, and is more in line with the idea that pragmatic problems are not universal. The aim of this study was to: (a) gain insight in the ability of children with ASD to derive scalar implicatures, and (b) do this by assessing not only sensitivity to underinformativeness, but also different degrees of tolerance to violations of informativeness. We employed a classic statement-evaluation task, presenting optimal, logical false, and underinformative utterances. In Experiment 1, children had to express their judgment on a binary option âI agreeâ vs. âI disagree.â In Experiment 2, a ternary middle answer option âI agree a bitâ was also available. Sixty-six Flemish-speaking 10-year-old children were tested: 22 children with ASD, an IQ-matched group, and an age-matched group. In the binary judgment task, the ASD group gave more pragmatic answers than the other groups, which was significant in the mixed effects logistic regression analysis, although not in the non-parametric analysis. In the ternary judgment task, the children with ASD showed a dichotomized attitude toward the speakerâs meaning, by tending to either fully agree or fully disagree with underinformative statements, in contrast with TD children, who preferred the middle option. Remarkably, the IQ-matched group exhibited the same pattern of results as the ASD group. Thanks to a fine-grained measure such as the ternary judgment task, this study highlighted a neglected aspect of the pragmatic profile of ASD, whose struggle with social communication seems to affect also the domain of informativeness. We discuss the implications of the dichotomized reaction toward violations of informativeness in terms of the potential role of ASD and of cognitive and verbal abilities
Unless Reasoning
We report the results of two experiments investigating conditional inferences from conditional unless assertions, such as Juan is not in LeĂłn unless Nuria is in Madrid. Experiments 1 and 2 check Fillenbaumâs hypothesis about the semantic similarity of unless with if not and only if assertions; both also examine inferential endorsements (Experiment 1) and endorsements and latencies (Experiment 2) of the four logically equivalent conditional formulations: if A then B, if not-B then not-A, A only if B and not- A unless B. The results of these experiments show the similarity of unless and only if, confirming that the representation of both conditionals from the outset probably include two possibilities directionally oriented from B to A; results also confirm the especial difficulty of unless assertions. The implications of the results are discussed in the context of recent psychological and linguistic theories of the meaning of unless.Se presentan los resultados de dos experimentos que investigan las inferencias a partir de enunciados condicionales a menos que, tales como âJuan no estĂĄ en LeĂłn a menos que Nuria estĂ© en Madridâ. Los experimentos 1 y 2 comprueban la hipĂłtesis de Fillenbaum sobre la similaridad semĂĄntica de los enunciados a menos que con si no y sĂłlo si; ambos experimentos examinan las respuestas inferenciales (Experimento 1) y las respuestas inferenciales y las latencias (Experimento 2) de las cuatro formulaciones condicionales lĂłgicamente equivalentes: si A entonces B, si no-B entonces no A, A sĂłlo si B y no-A a menos que B. Los resultados muestran la similaridad de a menos que y sĂłlo si, confirmando que la representaciĂłn de ambos condicionales probablemente incluya desde el principio dos posibilidades orientadas direccionalmente desde B a A; los resultados tambiĂ©n confirman la dificultad especial de las afirmaciones del tipo a menos que. Las implicaciones de los resultados se comentan en el contexto de las teorĂas psicolĂłgicas y lingĂŒĂsticas sobre el significado de a menos que
Why Humans Fail in Solving the Monty Hall Dilemma: A Systematic Review
The Monty Hall dilemma (MHD) is a difficult brain teaser. We present a systematic review of literature published between January 2000 and February 2018 addressing why humans systematically fail to react optimally to the MHD or fail to understand it. Based on a sequential analysis of the phases in the MHD, we first review causes in each of these phases that may prohibit humans to react optimally and to fully understand the problem. Next, we address the question whether humansâ performance, in terms of choice behaviour and (probability) understanding, can be improved. Finally, we discuss individual differences related to peopleâs suboptimal performance. This review provides novel insights by means of its holistic approach of the MHD: At each phase, there are reasons to expect that people respond suboptimally. Given that the occurrence of only one cause is sufficient, it is not surprising that suboptimal responses are so widespread and people rarely understand the MHD
Causal conditional reasoning and semantic memory retrieval: A test of the semantic memory framework
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Perception of Phonemically Ambiguous Spoken Sequences in French
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The Role of Task Characteristics in Children's Scalar Implicature Production
Children and Pragmatic Implicatures: A Test of the Pragmatic Tolerance Hypothesis with Different Tasks
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