•  7
    Kahneman, Tversky, and Kahneman-Tversky: three ways of thinking
    Thinking and Reasoning 30 (4): 531-547. 2024.
    This homage to Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky describes how each of them thought about psychology. It outlines the principal results of their collaborative research, which was their most original and most influential. Why? In search of an explanation it examines their joint thinking during their collaboration.
  •  4
    Reasoning From Quantified Modal Premises
    with Ana Cristina Quelhas and Célia Rasga
    Cognitive Science 48 (8). 2024.
    Quantified modal inferences interest logicians, linguists, and computer scientists, but no previous psychological study of them appears to be in the literature. Here is an example of one: All those artists are businessmen. Paulo is possibly one of the artists. What follows?People tend to conclude: Paulo is possibly a businessman (Experiment 1). It seems plausible, and it follows from an intuitive mental model in which Paulo is one of a set of artists who are businessmen. Further deliberation can…Read more
  •  2
    The Psychology of Su Doku Problems
    with Geoffrey P. Goodwin and N. Y. Louise Lee
  •  25
    Erratum: Descriptions and Discourse Models
    with A. Garnham
    Linguistics and Philosophy 4 (1): 157-157. 1980.
    This piece is simply an erratum published to correct in error in the paper "Descriptions and discourse models" by Phil Johnson-Laird and Alan Garnham in Linguistics and Philosophy.
  •  52
    Transitive and pseudo-transitive inferences
    with Geoffrey P. Goodwin
    Cognition 108 (2): 320-352. 2008.
  •  107
    Descriptions and discourse models
    with A. Garnham
    Linguistics and Philosophy 3 (3). 1979.
    This paper argues that mental models of discourse are key in any theory of the interpretation of definite descriptions. It considers both referential and attributive uses of such descriptions, in the sense introduced by Donnellan
  •  52
    Illusions of consistency in quantified assertions
    with Niklas Kunze, Sangeet Khemlani, and Max Lotstein
    In S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Cognitive Science Society. 2010.
  •  58
    Believability and syllogistic reasoning
    with Jane Oakhill and Alan Garnham
    Cognition 31 (2): 117-140. 1989.
    In this paper we investigate the locus of believability effects in syllogistic reasoning. We identify three points in the reasoning process at which such effects could occur: the initial interpretation of premises, the examination of alternative representations of them (in all of which any valid conclusion must be true), and the “filtering” of putative conclusions. The effect of beliefs at the first of these loci is well established. In this paper we report three experiments that examine whether…Read more
  •  61
    Does everyone love everyone? The psychology of iterative reasoning
    with Paolo Cherubini
    Thinking and Reasoning 10 (1). 2004.
    When a quantified premise such as: Everyone loves anyone who loves someone, occurs with a premise such as: Anne loves Beth, it follows immediately that everyone loves Anne. It also follows that Carol loves Diane, where these two individuals are in the domain of discourse. According to the theory of mental models, this inference requires the quantified premise to be used again to update a model of specific individuals. The paper reports four experiments examining such iterative inferences. Experi…Read more
  •  45
    The Relation Between Factual and Counterfactual Conditionals
    with Ana Cristina Quelhas and Célia Rasga
    Cognitive Science 42 (7): 2205-2228. 2018.
  •  62
    Syllogistic inference
    with Bruno G. Bara
    Cognition 16 (1): 1-61. 1984.
    This paper reviews current psychological theories of syllogistic inference and establishes that despite their various merits they all contain deficiencies as theories of performance. It presents the results of two experiments, one using syllogisms and the other using three-term series problems, designed to elucidate how the arrangement of terms within the premises affects performance. These data are used in the construction of a theory based on the hypothesis that reasoners construct mental mode…Read more
  •  22
  •  56
    Referential continuity and the coherence of discourse
    with Alan Garnham and Jane Oakhill
    Cognition 11 (1): 29-46. 1982.
    Two experiments were carried out to investigate the role of referential continuity in understanding discourse. In experiment 1, a group of university students listened to stories and descriptive passages presented in three different versions: the original passages, versions in which the sentences occured in a random order, and randomised versions in which referential continuity had been restored primarily by replacing pronouns and other terms with fuller and more appropriate noun phrases. The or…Read more
  •  129
    The psychological puzzle of Sudoku
    with Geoffrey P. Goodwin and N. Y. Louis Lee
    Thinking and Reasoning 14 (4): 342-364. 2008.
    Sudoku puzzles, which are popular worldwide, require individuals to infer the missing digits in a 9 9 array according to the general rule that every digit from 1 to 9 must occur once in each row, in each column, and in each of the 3-by-3 boxes in the array. We present a theory of how individuals solve these puzzles. It postulates that they rely solely on pure deductions, and that they spontaneously acquire various deductive tactics, which differ in their difficulty depending on their “relational…Read more
  • The psychology of understanding
    In A. J. Sanford & P. N. Johnson-Laird (eds.), The nature and limits of human understanding, T & T Clark. 2003.
  •  62
    The nature and limits of human understanding (edited book)
    T & T Clark. 2003.
    This book is an exploration of human understanding, from the perspectives of psychology, philosophy, biology and theology. The six contributors are among the most internationally eminent in their fields. Though scholarly, the writing is non-technical. No background in psychology, philosophy or theology is presumed. No other interdisciplinary work has undertaken to explore the nature of human understanding. This book is unique, and highly significant for anyone interested in or concerned about th…Read more
  •  156
    On imagining what is true (and what is false)
    with Patricia Barres
    Thinking and Reasoning 9 (1). 2003.
    How do people imagine the possibilities in which an assertion would be true and the possibilities in which it would be false? We argue that the mental representation of the meanings of connectives, such as "and", "or", and "if", specify how to construct the true possibilities for simple assertions containing just a single connective. It follows that the false possibilities are constructed by inference from the true possibilities. We report converging evidence supporting this account from four ex…Read more
  •  111
    The processes of inference
    with Sangeet Khemlani
    Argument and Computation 4 (1). 2013.
    (2013). The processes of inference. Argument & Computation: Vol. 4, Formal Models of Reasoning in Cognitive Psychology, pp. 4-20. doi: 10.1080/19462166.2012.674060.