Unless Reasoning

Directional effect in double conditionals with a construction task: The semantic hypothesis

The goal of this paper is to test the main predictions of the semantic hypothesis about the directional effect in double conditionals (such as, 'A only if B/only if C, B') with a construction task. The semantic hypothesis claims that directional effect can be explained by the inherent directionality of the relation between the relatum and the target object of the premises. According to this hypothesis, a directional effect should occur if only one of the end-terms of the premises takes the role of relatum: a) if the end-term that plays the role of relatum is in the first premise, a forward directional effect is predicted (from A to C); and b) if the end-term that plays the role of relatum is in the second premise, a backward directional effect is predicted (from C to A). On the other hand, it claims that there should be no directional effect when both end-terms take the role of relatum or when neither of the end-terms plays the role of relatum. Three experiments confirmed the main predictions of the semantic hypothesis in a construction task.

Working Memory, Text Comprehension, and Propositional Reasoning: A New Semantic Anaphora WM Test

The aim of this study was to present a new working memory test following the line of work started by García-Madruga et al. (2007) and to examine its relation to reading comprehension and propositional reasoning measures. In that study we designed a new working memory span test –based on Daneman & Carpenter's (1980) Reading Span Test (RST)– in which the processing task called for an inferential decision –to resolve a pronominal anaphora based on Morpho-Syntactic cues– and had people recall the result of this inference. In the current study, besides the RST and the Morpho-Syntactic Anaphora test, we presented a new Semantic Anaphora measure. In order to check the validity of this new Working Memory (WM) task, we used the same reasoning task used in the previous study as well as a new reading comprehension test. The results show the tight relationship amongst working memory, reading comprehension and reasoning, and confirm the validity of the new WM measure.

The semantics of 'unless' conditionals: evidence from 'unless' and disjunctive inferences

We report the results of an experiment investigating conditional inferences from conditional assertions such as 'Juan won't go to León unless Nuria goes to Madrid' and 'Either Nuria goes to Madrid or Juan won't go to León'. This experiment addresses Dancygier's claims about the semantics of 'unless' by examining inferential endorsements of 'not-A unless B' and 'Either B or not-A' in the canonical order, presenting the categorical premise after the conditional assertions, and in the inverse order, presenting the categorical premise before the conditional assertions. The results of the experiment confirm that the representation of 'unless' includes two possibilities, although as Dancygier holds one of the possibilities may not be complete. The implications of the results are discussed in the context of the strategic nature of conditional reasoning and recent convergent theories of linguistic processing.

The interpretation of indicative and subjunctive concessives

Using a priming paradigm in the context of a reading comprehension task, the possibilities that people keep in mind in order to understand indicative and subjunctive concessive sentences were examined and compared to those from factual and counterfactual 'if A, not-B' conditionals. The length of time it took people to read conjunctive descriptions (i.e., A and B, A and not-B, not-A and B, not-A and not-B) after they had been primed by the different types of linguistic form was measured. The results suggest that, whereas indicative 'even though' concessives and 'if, not' conditionals are understood by keeping in mind just a single possibility ('A and B' and 'A and not-B', respectively), the initial representations of subjunctive 'even if' concessive-conditionals and 'if, not' counterfactuals are compatible with a multiple-model representation. The implications of these results are discussed within the mental models framework.

Indicative and counterfactual 'only if' conditionals

We report three experiments to test the possibilities reasoners think about when they understand a conditional of the form 'A only if B' compared to 'if A then B'. The experiments examine conditionals in the indicative mood (e.g., A occurred only if B occurred) and counterfactuals in the subjunctive mood (A would have occurred only if B had occurred). The first experiment examines the conjunctions of events that reasoners judge to be consistent with conditionals, e.g., A and B, not-A and not-B. It shows that people think about one possibility to understand 'if' and two possibilities to understand 'only if'; they think about two possibilities to understand counterfactual 'if' and 'only if'. The second experiment shows that the possibilities people think about when they understand 'only if' are in a different temporal order (e.g., B and A) to the possibilities they think about for 'if' (A and B). The third experiment shows that people make different inferences from 'only if' and 'if' conditionals and counterfactuals. The implications of the results for theories of counterfactual conditionals are considered.