Psicologia Cognitiva
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Browsing Psicologia Cognitiva by Author "Byrne, Ruth M. J."
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- Advice conditionals about tips and warnings: Interpretations and inferencesPublication . Couto, Marta Barley de La Cueva; Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Byrne, Ruth M. J.Two experiments examine how people interpret and reason about advice conditionals, such as tips, for example, “if you study more your grades will improve”, and warnings, for example, “if you stop exercising you will gain weight”. Experiment 1 showed that when participants reason about whether a tip or warning could be true in different situations, their judgments correspond to a biconditional or conditional interpretation on about half of all trials, but to an enabling or tautology interpretation on many others. Experiment 2 showed that participants make few modus ponens and tollens inferences from tips and warnings, and more modus ponens inferences from tips than warnings. The implications for alternative theories are discussed.
- How children with autism reason about other's intentions: False-belief and counterfactual inferencesPublication . Rasga, Célia Maria Batalha Silva; Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Byrne, Ruth M. J.We examine false belief and counterfactual reasoning in children with autism with a new change-of-intentions task. Children listened to stories, for example, Anne is picking up toys and John hears her say she wants to find her ball. John goes away and the reason for Anne's action changes-Anne's mother tells her to tidy her bedroom. We asked, 'What will John believe is the reason that Anne is picking up toys?' which requires a false-belief inference, and 'If Anne's mother hadn't asked Anne to tidy her room, what would have been the reason she was picking up toys?' which requires a counterfactual inference. We tested children aged 6, 8 and 10 years. Children with autism made fewer correct inferences than typically developing children at 8 years, but by 10 years there was no difference. Children with autism made fewer correct false-belief than counterfactual inferences, just like typically developing children.
- Raciocínio contrafactual e modelos mentaisPublication . Byrne, Ruth M. J.; Quelhas, Ana CristinaA ideia central deste estudo é de que «... raciocinar sobre factos e raciocinar sobre possibilidades e impossibilidades, baseia-se nos mesmos tipos de representações mentais e processos cognitivos» (Byrne, 1997, p. 107). Quer dizer que as pessoas raciocinam através da construção e revisão de modelos mentais (e.g., Johnson-Laird, Byrne, 1991). As condicionais contrafactuais requerem que os raciocinadores tenham em mente não apenas o que é suposto ser verdadeiro, mas também o que é supostamente verdadeiro mas factualmente falso (Byrne, 1997, p. 117; cf. Johnson-Laird, Byrne, 1991, pp. 72- -73). E a hipótese de que a representação inicial de uma condicional contrafactual é mais explícita do que a de uma condicional factual, permite prever que as inferências Modus Tollens e Negação do Antecedente deverão ser feitas com maior frequência a partir das condicionais contrafactuais do que das factuais. Byrne e Tasso (in press) encontraram evidência para esta hipótese. No estudo que apresentamos, também procuramos replicar esses resultados encontrados por Byrne e Tasso, e acrescentamos algumas hipóteses relacionadas com as latências para compreender os dois tipos de condicionais, e para escolher a conclusão. Utilizamos condicionais neutras do tipo «Se houve um círculo, então houve um triângulo», e apresentamos aos participantes os quatro silogismos condicionais no programa SUPERLAB.
- Reasoning with deontic and counterfactual conditionalsPublication . Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Byrne, Ruth M. J.We report two new phenomena of deontic reasoning: (1) For conditionals with deontic content such as, “If the nurse cleaned up the blood then she must have worn rubber gloves”, reasoners make more modus tollens inferences (from “she did not wear rubber gloves” to “she did not clean up the blood”) compared to conditionals with epistemic content. (2) For conditionals in the subjunctive mood with deontic content, such as, “If the nurse had cleaned up the blood then she must have had to wear rubber gloves”, reasoners make the same frequency of all inferences as they do for conditionals in the indicative mood with deontic content. In this regard, subjunctive deontics are different from subjunctive epistemic conditionals: reasoners interpret subjunctive epistemic conditionals as counterfactual and they make more negative inferences such as modus tollens from them. The experiments show these two phenomena occur for deontic conditionals that contain the modal auxiliary “must” and ones that do not. We discuss the results in terms of the mental representations of deontic conditionals and of counterfactual conditionals.
- The contextual nature of conditional reasoningPublication . Byrne, Ruth M. J.; McDonald, NickIn this thesis, it is proposed that the products of human rea-soning- are a function of the context in which that reasoning occurs. Consequently, the effects of two kinds of contexts are addressed, in two series of experiments. In the first series, the environmental context, in which conditional reasoning is embedded, was explored. In Experiment 1 subjects were given conditional arguments, accompanied by contextual information consisting of a second conditional. The antecedent in the second conditional was either an alternative condition or an additional condition. It was found that alternative conditions suppress the inferences traditionally considered fallacious, while additional conditions suppress the inferences sanctioned as logically valid. It was also found that when these alternative or additional conditions are conjoined or disjoined In the minor premises that accompany the con¬ditional arguments, this suppression no longer occurs, In Experiment 2, groups of subjects were again given conditional arguments that were either accompanied by extra contextual information or not. Further groups were given conditional arguments that were prefaced either by Information about the relevance of contextual Information, or by tasks requiring the retrieval of contextual Information. It was found that neither recognizing the relevance of contextual Information nor retrieving that Information in isolation, is enough to suppress the inferences. It was found once more, that contextual Information, which embodies both of these features, suppresses the inferences, replicating the primary results of Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, groups of subjects were given conditional inducements. One group received inducements unaccompanied by any contextual Information. Other groups received them accompanied by information about the situation in which the utterance was made, or by information about the duration of the utterance (either that it was long or short), or accompanied by information about both the situation and the duration. It was found that information about both the situation and that it was a long duration suppresses the invalid inferences, while information about the situation and that it was a short duration suppresses the valid inferences. Neither situational information, which was hypothesized to enable the retrieval of relevant information, nor durational information, which was hypothesized to enable the recognition of the relevance of other information, were singly sufficient to suppress the inferences. A model of inference-testing, based on the conjoined operation of the processes of recognizing the relevance of other information and retrieving specific instances of the relevant information, is described. A second way that the context in which conditional reasoning is embedded can affect reasoning was investigated, In Experiment 4, the frequency of inferences made from sequences of conditional premises was compared to the frequency of inferences made from those premises in isolation from each other. Subjects were given conditional prem¬ises of different forms. It was found that fewer inferences are made on sequences of premises than from those premises in isolation from each other, for certain forms of premises. In Experiment 5, two features, identified as potentially responsible for this, were manipulated. Some subjects received the sequences of conditional premises as before, while others received the premises in isolation, again as before, both of the form for which differences were observed in Experiment 4. Other subjects received arguments constructed to ensure that either the joint presentation of the premises was preserved, or that the uncertainty of using an intermediate conclusion as a minor premise from which to make an inference was preserved, to establish the respective roles of these factors. It was found that the source of differences in the frequency of inferences between sequences of premises and those prem¬ises in isolation can be attributed to the joint representation of the premise information. Experiment 6 determined the role of some of the features of the form of argument for which differences were observed. Groups of sub¬jects were presented with two different forms of sequences of premise, and comparable premises in isolation. One of these new forms possessed one of the features, that of a negative in the first condi¬tional, while the second sequence possessed two of the features that of a negative in the first conditional with that negative located at the consequent of the conditional. Neither possessed the third feature, of the atransitivity of the argument. It was found that neither of these sequences of premises differed from comparable premises in isolation, in the frequency of inferences made. This indicates that all three features are responsible for the joint representation of arguments of certain sequences leading to fewer inferences. A model is proposed that shows how the representation of sequences of premises differs from the representation of premises in isolation. Finally, the implications of the effects of context on conditional reasoning found in these experiments, for the four theories of reasoning described in the introductory review, and for cognitive psychology in general, are explored in the final chapter.