Douven, I;
Elqayam, S;
Singmann, H;
van Wijnbergen-Huitink, J;
(2018)
Conditionals and inferential connections: A hypothetical inferential theory.
Cognitive Psychology
, 101
pp. 50-81.
10.1016/j.cogpsych.2017.09.002.
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Abstract
Intuition suggests that for a conditional to be evaluated as true, there must be some kind ofconnection between its component clauses. In this paper, we formulate and test a new psycho-logical theory to account for this intuition. We combined previous semantic and psychologicaltheorizing to propose that the key to the intuition is a relevance-driven, satisficing-boundedinferential connection between antecedent and consequent. To test our theory, we created anovel experimental paradigm in which participants were presented with a soritical series ofobjects, notably colored patches (Experiments 1 and 4) and spheres (Experiment 2), or both(Experiment 3), and were asked to evaluate related conditionals embodying non-causal in-ferential connections (such as“If patch number 5 is blue, then so is patch number 4”). All fourexperiments displayed a unique response pattern, in which (largely determinate) responses weresensitive to parameters determining inference strength, as well as to consequent position in theseries, in a way analogous to belief bias. Experiment 3 showed that this guaranteed relevance canbe suppressed, with participants reverting to the defective conditional. Experiment 4 showed thatthis pattern can be partly explained by a measure of inference strength. This pattern supports ourtheory’s“principle of relevant inference”and“principle of bounded inference,”highlighting thedual processing characteristics of the inferential connection.
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