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Reasoning with conditionals: The effects of a binary restriction
Author(s) -
Cope D. E.
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1979.tb02149.x
Subject(s) - psychology , antecedent (behavioral psychology) , cognition , inference , binary number , affect (linguistics) , cognitive psychology , social psychology , phenomenon , developmental psychology , communication , artificial intelligence , arithmetic , neuroscience , computer science , mathematics , epistemology , philosophy
Contrary to previous experimental results, it appears that the binary restriction of conditional statements does not affect subjects making either the inference of denying the antecedent or of that of affirming the consequent. It is suggested that the reason for this may lie in the inadequate nature of previous controls. A new finding is that modus tollens inferences are made significantly less often with non‐binary statements. The explanation proposed here for this phenomenon utilizes the already established conclusion that subjects have difficulty with negatives and suggests that particular difficulty will be found with negatives in non‐binary conditions because logically these cannot refer to single items. In dealing with such inferences subjects will be put under an increased cognitive load, which may be sufficient to overload the system, thus causing errors.