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1248Conditionals, Context, and the Suppression EffectCognitive Science 41 (3): 540-589. 2017.Modus ponens is the argument from premises of the form If A, then B and A to the conclusion B. Nearly all participants agree that the modus ponens conclusion logically follows when the argument appears in this Basic form. However, adding a further premise can lower participants’ rate of agreement—an effect called suppression. We propose a theory of suppression that draws on contemporary ideas about conditional sentences in linguistics and philosophy. Semantically, the theory assumes that people …Read more
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1197Experimenting with (Conditional) PerfectionIn Stefan Kaufmann, David Over & Ghanshyam Sharma (eds.), Conditionals: Logic, Semantics, Psychology, . forthcoming.Conditional perfection is the phenomenon in which conditionals are strengthened to biconditionals. In some contexts, “If A, B” is understood as if it meant “A if and only if B.” We present and discuss a series of experiments designed to test one of the most promising pragmatic accounts of conditional perfection. This is the idea that conditional perfection is a form of exhaustification—that is a strengthening to an exhaustive reading, triggered by a question that the conditional answers. If a sp…Read more
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216How do we regard fictional people? How do they regard us?Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. forthcoming.Readers assume that commonplace properties of the real world also hold in realistic fiction. They believe, for example, that the usual physical laws continue to apply. But controversy exists in theories of fiction about whether real individuals exist in the story’s world. Does Queen Victoria exist in the world of Jane Eyre, even though Victoria is not mentioned in it? The experiments we report here find that when participants are prompted to consider the world of a fictional individual (“Conside…Read more
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176Reasoning: Studies of Human Inference and its Foundations (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2008.This interdisciplinary work is a collection of major essays on reasoning: deductive, inductive, abductive, belief revision, defeasible, cross cultural, conversational, and argumentative. They are each oriented toward contemporary empirical studies. The book focuses on foundational issues, including paradoxes, fallacies, and debates about the nature of rationality, the traditional modes of reasoning, as well as counterfactual and causal reasoning. It also includes chapters on the interface betwee…Read more
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123From numerical concepts to concepts of numberBehavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (6): 623-642. 2008.Many experiments with infants suggest that they possess quantitative abilities, and many experimentalists believe that these abilities set the stage for later mathematics: natural numbers and arithmetic. However, the connection between these early and later skills is far from obvious. We evaluate two possible routes to mathematics and argue that neither is sufficient: (1) We first sketch what we think is the most likely model for infant abilities in this domain, and we examine proposals for extr…Read more
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87Reasoning About Truth in First-Order LogicJournal of Logic, Language and Information 22 (1): 115-137. 2013.First, we describe a psychological experiment in which the participants were asked to determine whether sentences of first-order logic were true or false in finite graphs. Second, we define two proof systems for reasoning about truth and falsity in first-order logic. These proof systems feature explicit models of cognitive resources such as declarative memory, procedural memory, working memory, and sensory memory. Third, we describe a computer program that is used to find the smallest proofs in …Read more
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86Identity, Causality, and Pronoun AmbiguityTopics in Cognitive Science 6 (4): 663-680. 2014.This article looks at the way people determine the antecedent of a pronoun in sentence pairs, such as: Albert invited Ron to dinner. He spent hours cleaning the house. The experiment reported here is motivated by the idea that such judgments depend on reasoning about identity . Because the identity of an individual over time depends on the causal-historical path connecting the stages of the individual, the correct antecedent will also depend on causal connections. The experiment varied how likel…Read more
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77Inductive judgments about natural categoriesJournal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 14 (6): 665-681. 1975.The present study examined the effects of semantic structure on simple inductive judgments about category members. For a particular category, subjects were told that one of the species had a given property and were asked to estimate the proportion of instances in the other species that possessed the property. The results indicated that category structure—in particular, the typicality of the species—influenced subjects' judgments. These results were interpreted by models based on the following as…Read more
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75Argumentative Thinking: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Psychology and ArgumentationInformal Logic 29 (4): 327-336. 2009.This special issue of Informal Logic brings together a num-ber of traditions from the psychology and philosophy of argument. Psycho-logists’ interest in argument typically arises in understanding how indivi-duals form and change their beliefs. Thus, theories of argument can serve as models of the structure of justi-fications for belief, as methods of diagnosing errors in beliefs, and as prototypes for learning. The articles in this issue illustrate all three of these connections
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74The current status of research on concept combinationMind and Language 10 (1-2): 72-104. 1995.Understanding novel phrases (e.g. upside‐down daisy) and classifying objects in categories named by phrases ought to have common properties, but you'd never know it from current theories. The best candidate for both jobs is the Theory Theory, but it faces difficulties when theories are impoverished. A potential solution is a dual approach that couples theories (representations‐about categories) with fixed mentalese expressions (representations‐of categories). Both representations combine informa…Read more
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70Inference and Explanation in Counterfactual ReasoningCognitive Science 37 (6): 1107-1135. 2013.This article reports results from two studies of how people answer counterfactual questions about simple machines. Participants learned about devices that have a specific configuration of components, and they answered questions of the form “If component X had not operated [failed], would component Y have operated?” The data from these studies indicate that participants were sensitive to the way in which the antecedent state is described—whether component X “had not operated” or “had failed.” Ans…Read more
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59Two causal theories of counterfactual conditionalsCognitive Science 34 (2): 175-221. 2010.Bayes nets are formal representations of causal systems that many psychologists have claimed as plausible mental representations. One purported advantage of Bayes nets is that they may provide a theory of counterfactual conditionals, such as If Calvin had been at the party, Miriam would have left early. This article compares two proposed Bayes net theories as models of people's understanding of counterfactuals. Experiments 1-3 show that neither theory makes correct predictions about backtracking…Read more
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58Explanation and Evidence in Informal ArgumentCognitive Science 24 (4): 573-604. 2000.A substantial body of evidence shows that people tend to rely too heavily on explanations when trying to justify an opinion. Some research suggests these errors may arise from an inability to distinguish between explanations and the evidence that bears upon them. We examine an alternative account, that many people do distinguish between explanations and evidence, but rely more heavily on unsubstantiated explanations when evidence is scarce or absent. We examine the philosophical and psychologica…Read more
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57Dissonances in theories of number understandingBehavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (6): 671-687. 2008.Traditional theories of how children learn the positive integers start from infants' abilities in detecting the quantity of physical objects. Our target article examined this view and found no plausible accounts of such development. Most of our commentators appear to agree that no adequate developmental theory is presently available, but they attempt to hold onto a role for early enumeration. Although some defend the traditional theories, others introduce new basic quantitative abilities, new me…Read more
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54Goals for a theory of deduction: Reply to Johnson-Laird (review)Minds and Machines 7 (3): 409-424. 1997.
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52Rebooting the bootstrap argument: Two puzzles for bootstrap theories of concept developmentBehavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (3): 145. 2011.The Origin of Concepts sets out an impressive defense of the view that children construct entirely new systems of concepts. We offer here two questions about this theory. First, why doesn't the bootstrapping process provide a pattern for translating between the old and new systems, contradicting their claimed incommensurability? Second, can the bootstrapping process properly distinguish meaning change from belief change?
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44Tracing the identity of objectsPsychological Review 113 (1): 1-30. 2006.This article considers how people judge the identity of objects (e.g., how people decide that a description of an object at one time, t₀, belongs to the same object as a description of it at another time, t₁). The authors propose a causal continuer model for these judgments, based on an earlier theory by Nozick (1981). According to this model, the 2 descriptions belong to the same object if (a) the object at t₁ is among those that are causally close enough to be genuine continuers of the origina…Read more
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40Structure and process in semantic memory: A featural model for semantic decisionsPsychological Review 81 (3): 214-241. 1974.
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37Circular reasoningCognitive Science 26 (6): 767-795. 2002.Good informal arguments offer justification for their conclusions. They go wrong if the justifications double back, rendering the arguments circular. Circularity, however, is not necessarily a single property of an argument, but may depend on (a) whether the argument repeats an earlier claim, (b) whether the repetition occurs within the same line of justification, and (c) whether the claim is properly grounded in agreed‐upon information. The experiments reported here examine whether people take …Read more
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37Identifying and counting objects: The role of sortal conceptsCognition 145 (C): 89-103. 2015.Sortal terms, such as table or horse, are count nouns (akin to a basic-level terms). According to some theories, the meaning of sortals provides conditions for telling objects apart (individuating objects, e.g., telling one table from a second) and for identifying objects over time (e.g., determining that a particular horse at one time is the same horse at another). A number of psychologists have proposed that sortal concepts likewise provide psychologically real conditions for individuating and…Read more
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36Qualities and relations in folk theories of mindBehavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (1): 75-76. 1993.
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31Out of sorts? Some remedies for theories of object concepts: A reply to Rhemtulla and Xu (2007)Psychological Review 114 (4): 1096-1102. 2007.
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29Possible Objects: Topological Approaches to IndividuationCognitive Science 44 (11). 2020.We think of the world around us as divided into physical objects like toasters and daisies, rather than solely as a smear of properties like yellow and smooth. How do we single out these objects? One theory of object concepts uses part‐of relations and relations of connectedness. According to this proposal, an object is a connected spatial item of maximal extent: Any other connected item that overlaps (i.e., shares a part with) the object must be a part of that object. This article reports four …Read more
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29Core Cognition and its AftermathPhilosophical Topics 45 (1): 157-179. 2017.A current and very influential theory in psychology holds that infants have innate, perceptually informed systems that endow them with surprisingly high-level concepts—for example, concepts of cardinality and causality. Proponents of core cognition hold that these initial concepts then provide the building blocks for later adult ideas within these domains. This paper reviews the evidence for core cognition and argues that these systems aren’t sufficient to explain how children learn their way to…Read more
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29Folk psychology of mental activitiesPsychological Review 96 (2): 187-207. 1989.A central aspect of people's beliefs about the mind is that mental activities—for example, thinking, reasoning, and problem solving—are interrelated, with some activities being kinds or parts of others. In common-sense psychology, reasoning is a kind of thinking and reasoning is part of problem solving. People's conceptions of these mental kinds and parts can furnish clues to the ordinary meaning of these terms and to the differences between folk and scientific psychology. In this article, we us…Read more