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88How reaction time measures elucidate the matching bias and the way negations are processedThinking and Reasoning 12 (3). 2006.Matching bias refers to the non-normative performance that occurs when elements mentioned in a rule do not correspond with those in a test item. One aim of the present work is to capture matching bias via reaction times as participants carry out truth-table evaluation tasks. Experiment 1 requires participants to verify conditional rules, and Experiment 2 to falsify them as the paradigm employs four types of conditional sentences that systematically rotate negatives in the antecedent and conseque…Read more
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23The Interpretation of Classically Quantified Sentences: A Set‐Theoretic ApproachCognitive Science 30 (4): 691-723. 2006.
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70What Autism Can Reveal About Every … not Sentences: ArticlesJournal of Semantics 24 (1): 73-90. 2007.The sentence Every horse did not jump over the fence can be interpreted with the negation taking scope over the quantifier or with the quantifier Every taking scope over the negation. Beginning with Musolino, Crain and Thornton, much work has shown that while adults typically adopt a Not every reading in ‘2-of-3’ contexts, children do not and often produce None readings instead. In line with suggestions from Musolino and Lidz, we propose that this developmental effect relies to a great extent on…Read more
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132Linguistic-pragmatic factors in interpreting disjunctionsThinking and Reasoning 8 (4). 2002.The connective or can be treated as an inclusive disjunction or else as an exclusive disjunction. Although researchers are aware of this distinction, few have examined the conditions under which each interpretation should be anticipated. Based on linguistic-pragmatic analyses, we assume that interpretations are initially inclusive before either (a) remaining so, or (b) becoming exclusive by way of an implicature ( but not both ). We point to a class of situations that ought to predispose disjunc…Read more
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72Intelligence and reasoning are not one and the sameBehavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (2): 163-164. 2007.Lest the conjunction seduce readers into supposing that the two are of a piece, we point out that analyses made at the superset level concerning intelligence do not readily align with or outperform the scientific advances made via investigations of reasoning, which at best can be viewed as a subset of intelligent behaviour
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34You can laugh at everything, but not with everyoneLatest Issue of Interaction Studies 18 (1): 116-141. 2017.This paper explores the impact of group affiliation with respect to the on-line processing and appreciation of jokes, using facial electromyography activity and offline evaluations as dependent measures. Two experiments were conducted in which group affiliation varied between the participant and each of two independent speakers whose described political profiles were distinguished through one word: “Right” versus “Left.” Experiment 1 showed that jokes were more highly evaluated and that associat…Read more
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54Predicting intermediate and multiple conclusions in propositional logic inference problems: Further evidence for a mental logicJournal of Experimental Psychology: General 124 (3): 263. 1995.
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24Slowdowns in scalar implicature processing: Isolating the intention-reading costs in the Bott & Noveck taskCognition 238 (C): 105480. 2023.
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25How Do Addressees Exploit Conventionalizations? From a Negative Reference to an ad hoc ImplicatureFrontiers in Psychology 10. 2019.
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26The Interpretation of Classically Quantified Sentences: A Set‐Theoretic ApproachCognitive Science 30 (4): 691-723. 2006.We present a set-theoretic model of the mental representation of classically quantified sentences (All P are Q, Some P are Q, Some P are not Q, and No P are Q). We take inclusion, exclusion, and their negations to be primitive concepts. We show that although these sentences are known to have a diagrammatic expres- sion (in the form of the Gergonne circles) that constitutes a semantic representation, these concepts can also be expressed syntactically in the form of algebraic formulas. We hypothes…Read more
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261The Interpretation of Classically Quantified Sentences: A set-theoretic approachCognitive Science 30 (4): 691-723. 2006.We present a set-theoretic model of the mental representation of classically quantified sentences (All P are Q, Some P are Q, Some P are not Q, and No P are Q). We take inclusion, exclusion, and their negations to be primitive concepts. It is shown that, although these sentences are known to have a diagrammatic expression (in the form of the Gergonne circles) which constitute a semantic representation, these concepts can also be expressed syntactically in the form of algebraic formulas. It is hy…Read more
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76When children are more logical than adults: Experimental investigations of scalar implicatureCognition 78 (2): 165-188. 2001.A conversational implicature is an inference that consists in attributing to a speaker an implicit meaning that goes beyond the explicit linguistic meaning of an utterance. This paper experimentallyinvestigates scalar implicature, a paradigmatic case of implicature in which a speaker's use of a term like Some indicates that the speaker had reasons not to use a more informative one from the samescale, e.g. All; thus, Some implicates Not all. Pragmatic theorists like Grice would predict that a pra…Read more
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27Children's enrichments of conjunctive sentences in contextIn Philippe de Brabanter & Mikhail Kissine (eds.), Utterance Interpretation and Cognitive Models, Emmerald Publishers. 2009.