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Reasoning with 'unless' counterfactual conditionals

dc.contributor.authorGarcía-Madruga, Juan A.
dc.contributor.authorMoreno-Ríos, Sérgio
dc.contributor.authorQuelhas, Ana Cristina
dc.contributor.authorJuhos, Csongor
dc.date.accessioned2012-02-13T21:19:46Z
dc.date.available2012-02-13T21:19:46Z
dc.date.issued2009
dc.description.abstractThis 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.por
dc.identifier.citationPsicológica, 30, 217-243por
dc.identifier.issn1576-8597
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10400.12/1223
dc.language.isoengpor
dc.peerreviewedyespor
dc.publisherDepartment of Methodology of the Behavioral Sciences of the University of Valenciapor
dc.titleReasoning with 'unless' counterfactual conditionalspor
dc.typejournal article
dspace.entity.typePublication
oaire.citation.conferencePlaceValenciapor
oaire.citation.endPage243por
oaire.citation.startPage217por
oaire.citation.titlePsicológicapor
person.familyNameJuhos
person.givenNameCsongor
person.identifier.ciencia-id4816-0611-8CDA
person.identifier.orcid0000-0001-6812-6986
rcaap.rightsopenAccesspor
rcaap.typearticlepor
relation.isAuthorOfPublicationd871c220-3c84-4057-a676-9d4848da3cfc
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscoveryd871c220-3c84-4057-a676-9d4848da3cfc

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