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- Necessidade de cognição, memória de trabalho e recuperação de contra-exemplos para condicionais causaisPublication . Couto, Marta Barley de La Cueva; Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Juhos, CsongorA procura de contra-exemplos é provavelmente a fase mais importante do raciocí - nio dedutivo, uma vez que visa garantir a validade da conclusão. A explicação mais difundida para a diminuta procura de contra-exemplos é a capacidade limitada da memória de trabalho (Markovits & Barrouillet 2002; De Neys, Schaeken & d’Ydewalle, 2002; 2003; 2005a; 2005b) o que não parece ser suficiente para explicar a pouca iniciativa dos sujeitos em utilizarem a procura de contra-exemplos como estratégia de verificação (Oakhill, & Johnson-Laird, 1985). No presente trabalho testou-se a hipótese de que a necessidade de cognição dos sujeitos (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982) tem influência no processo de recuperação de contra-exemplos, para condicionais causais, de modo aprofundar o conhecimento das razões que levam a que os sujeitos procurem tão poucos contra-exemplos durante o raciocínio dedutivo (Oakhill, & Johnson-Laird, 1985; Johnson-laird, 2006). Para o efeito, um total de 60 participantes (15 alunos do mestrado integrado em psicologia, 15 alunos de doutoramento, 15 operários fabris e 15 empregados de mesa) realizou 3 tarefas: escala Necessidade de Cognição (Silva & Garcia-Marques, 2006), uma tarefa de raciocínio e uma tarefa para avaliar a capacidade da memória de trabalho (Guerreiro, Quelhas & Garcia-Madruga, 2006). Os resultados indicam que o processo de recuperação de contra-exemplos é influenciado pela necessidade de cognição e que esta influência além de significativa é superior à influência da capacidade da memória de trabalho.
- A psicologia cognitiva e o estudo do raciocínio dedutivo no último meio séculoPublication . Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Juhos, CsongorPara assinalar os 50 anos de ensino da Psicologia em Portugal, ou seja, o nascimento do ISPA, iremos reflectir sobre este meio século de estudos e trabalhos no âmbito da psicologia cognitiva, nomeadamente no domínio do raciocínio dedutivo, revendo as principais tarefas utilizadas para o estudar, bem como as principais teorias psicológicas que o explicam. Na parte final, apresentaremos o nosso contributo mais recente neste domínio.
- Reasoning about intentions : Counterexamples to reasons for actionsPublication . Juhos, Csongor; Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Byrne, Ruth M. J.Four experiments tested the idea that people distinguish between biconditional, conditional, and enabling intention conditionals by thinking about counterexamples. The experiments examined intention conditionals that contain different types of reasons for actions, such as beliefs, goals, obligations, and social norms, based on a corpus of 48 intention conditionals established through an extensive materials test (n 136). Experiment 1 (n 19) showed that retrieved alternative reasons suppress the affirmation of the consequent and denial of the antecedent inferences from conditional intentions, whereas retrieved disabling reasons suppress the modus ponens and modus tollens inferences from enabling intentions. Experiment 2 (n 61) showed that the suppression effects also occur for explicitly provided alternatives and disablers, for a large corpus of 80 intention conditionals. Experiment 3 (n 60) showed that the suppression effects also occur for unfamiliar content, for which participants cannot rely on prior knowledge or beliefs about probabilities. Experiment 4 (n 26) showed that participants retrieve alternatives and disablers readily for intentions just as they do for causal conditionals. The implications of the results for alternative accounts based on possibilities and probabilities are discussed.
- Counterfactual thinking and functional differences in depressionPublication . Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Power, Michael J.; Juhos, Csongor; Senos, JorgeThe purpose of the studies reported in this paper was to evaluate the function of counterfactual thinking (CT) in depression. In Experiment 1, depressed and non-depressed participants were asked to imagine themselves as the protagonist of a hypothetical situation, and to think counterfactually about three different scenarios. The results showed that there was a similar CT style (in terms of direction, structure and focus of mutation) for the depressed and the nondepressed groups. It was also found that the perceived preparation for a future similar situation increased after CT and, contrary to our hypotheses, this effect was observed in both groups. In Experiment 2, a real-life situation was used (a course examination) in which participants experienced a negative outcome (a poor score on the test). Again, it was observed that depressed and non-depressed participants showed the same CT style, but non-depressed participants were more likely to use CT spontaneously. In addition, the second study showed further differences between the two groups: depressed participants not only showed a lack of cognitive benefi ts from thinking counterfactually (i.e., after CT they do not feel more prepared for future similar events, nor able to avoid a similar bad outcome, in contrast to the non-depressed participants), but also show a lack of behavioural changes (both intentions to change and actual changes over the subsequent week). In conclusion, these results provide evidence about the function of CT both in depressed and in non-depressed thinking, and highlight both the similarities and differences for these two groups.
- The modulation of conditional assertions and its effects on reasoningPublication . Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Johnson-Laird, Philip N.; Juhos, CsongorThe theory of mental models postulates that conditionals of the sort, if A then C, have a “core” meaning referring to three possibilities: A and C, not-A and C, and not-A and not-C. The meaning of a conditional’s clauses and general knowledge can modulate this meaning, blocking certain possibilities or adding relations between the clauses. Four experiments investigated such interpretations in factual and deontic domains. In Experiment 1, the participants constructed instances of what was possible and what was impossible according to various conditionals. The results corroborated the general predictions of the model theory and also the occurrence of modulation. The resulting interpretations governed the conclusions that participants accepted in Experiment 2, which also yielded the predicted effects of a time limit on responding. In Experiment 3, the participants drew the predicted conclusions for themselves. In Experiment 4, modulation led to predicted temporal relations between A and C. We relate these results to current theories of conditionals.
- Reasoning with 'unless' counterfactual conditionalsPublication . García-Madruga, Juan A.; Moreno-Ríos, Sérgio; Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Juhos, CsongorThis article tackles factual and counterfactual 'unless' expressions such as "Virginia will not pass the exam unless she works harder" and "Virginia would not passed the exam unless she had worked harder". 'Unless' is a negative conditional that is semantically equivalent to 'if not'. However, some authers have claimed that 'unless' is more closely related to 'only if' than to 'if not'. We report two experiments that compare conditional inferences from 'unless' to 'if-not' amd 'only if' factual and counterfactual conditionals. The first experiment compared 'not-A unless B' and 'if not-B then not-A' and showed a difference between affirmative (i.e. B therefore A, A therefore B)and negative (i.e. not-B therefore not-A, not-A therefore not-B) inferences only for factual 'if not'. The second experiment compared 'not-A unless B' and 'A only if B' and showed no differences between affirmative and negative inferences for factual 'unless' and 'only if', whereas the affirmative inferences were higher for countrafactual 'unless' and 'only if'. In both experiments latency results confirm that inferences from 'B to A' were faster than from 'A to B' for unless and 'only if'. The implications of the results for the mental representations and processing of counterfactual 'unless', 'if not' and 'only if' are discussed in the context of mental model theory.
- Paradigma subjacente ao estudo da inferência condicionalPublication . Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Juhos, CsongorNeste artigo apresentamos os estudos sobre as inferências com frases condicionais, do tipo “Se A, então C”, como o paradigma experimental que tem sido privilegiado para estudar a raciocínio dedutivo. Iremos referir os efeitos principais que foram encontrados desde os estudos originais, bem como as diversas explicações teóricas de que a psicologia dispõe atualmente para explicar esses efeitos. Serão realçadas as metodologias habitualmente utilizadas, variáveis moderadoras e moduladoras, bem como alguns exemplos do uso do paradigma.
- Temporal and spatial relations in sentential reasoningPublication . Juhos, Csongor; Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Johnson-Laird, Philip N.The mental model theory postulates that the meanings of assertions, and knowledge about their context can modulate the logical meaning of sentential connectives, such as ‘‘if’’ and ‘‘or’’. One known effect of modulation is to block the representation of possibilities to which a proposition refers. But, modulation should also add relational information, such as temporal order, to models of possibilities. Three experiments tested this prediction. Experiment 1 showed that individuals spontaneously matched the tense of their conclusions (in Portuguese) to embody implied, but unexpressed, temporal relations in conditional premises. Experiment 2 demonstrated the same phenomenon in inferences from disjunctions. Experiment 3 showed that the number of such implicit relations in inferences from conditionals affects both accuracy and the speed of reasoning. These results support the modulation hypothesis.
- Counterfactual thinking : Study of the focus effect of scenarios and blame ascriptions to victim and perpetratorPublication . Marques, João Amaral; Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Juhos, Csongor; Couto, Marta Barley de La Cueva; Rasga, Célia Maria Batalha SilvaIn two different studies we examined the focus effect of a scenario (i.e., the fact that a given character is the protagonist of a story) on two interconnected domains: the generation of counterfactual thoughts and the ascription of blame. It was hypothesised that being the focal agent of a story would not only lead to more counterfactuals centred on him or her, but also to greater ascriptions of blame as it would be easier to imagine how that actor could have behaved differently had he chosen or wanted to, and thus avoided a deleterious outcome. Different negatively-valenced scenarios depicting a certain misfortune such as a mugging were created in which victim, perpetrator or both characters, were the centre of the story. Results showed that placing either victim or perpetrator as the protagonist of a scenario increases the number of counterfactual thoughts centred on that character, but does not necessarily increase the blame attributed to him or her as the perpetrator was always ascribed more blame than the victim, irrespective of who was the protagonist. Study 2’s findings replicate those of Study 1 even with a different experimental design, modified materials, and various counterbalancing measures, hence suggesting that being the protagonist enables one to easily consider counterfactual alternatives involving that actor, but does not prevent one from identifying who is rightfully to blame for a given misfortune. The results and their implications were interpreted according to different theoretical perspectives and possible future avenues of research are discussed.
- Desenvolvimento do raciocínio condicional e modelos mentaisPublication . Quelhas, Ana Cristina; Juhos, Csongor; Senos, Jorge; Rocha, Teresa AlmeidaDe acordo com a teoria dos modelos mentais (Johnson-Laird, 1983; Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 1991) a interpretação de uma frase condicional, do tipo Se p, então q, gera os modelos iniciais: p q ... em que os três pontos representam um modelo sem conteúdo explícito. A representação completa da condicional compreende os seguintes modelos explícitos: p q ¬p ¬q ¬p q em que “¬” serve aqui para indicar a negação. A partir deste quadro teórico, e da suposição de que uma inferência é tanto mais difícil quanto maior o número de modelos explícitos que requer, é possível colocar hipóteses sobre diferenças no nível de dificuldade nas inferências com os quatro silogismos condicionais. Na experiência que iremos descrever pretende-se testar essas hipóteses em sujeitos de diferentes níveis etários (8, 11 e 15 anos). A partir dos resultados obtidos serão adiantadas hipóteses sobre o progressivo desenvolvimento da capacidade de representar os três modelos mentais de interpretação das condicionais. Serão ainda realçadas diferenças na resposta dos sujeitos que derivam de diferenças no conteúdo das frases condicionais. Um último objectivo, de carácter exploratório, prende-se com a comparação das respostas em sujeitos de duas nacionalidades (Portuguesa e Húngara). Assim, o grupo de variáveis independentes define um plano factorial misto 2X3X2X4 (Nacionalidade X Idade X Conteúdo X Silogismo), dado que a última variável é intra-sujeitos.