Abstract
The mental model theory of reasoning postulates that individuals construct mental models of the possibilities in which the premises of an inference hold and that these models represent what is true but not what is false. An unexpected consequence of this assumption is that certain premises should yield systematically invalid inferences. This prediction is unique among current theories of reasoning, because no alternative theory, whether based on formal rules of inference or on probabilistic considerations, predicts these illusory inferences. We report three studies of novel illusory inferences that depend on embedded disjunctions—for example, premises of this sort: A or else (B or else C). The theory distinguishes between those embedded disjunctions that should yield illusions and those that should not. In Experiment 1, we corroborated this distinction. In Experiment 2, we extended the illusory inferences to a more stringently controlled set of problems. In Experiment 3, we established a novel method for reducing illusions by calling for participants to make auxiliary inferences.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barwise, J. (1989). The situation in logic. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
Birney, D. P., Halford, G. S., & Andrews, G. (2006). Measuring the influence of complexity on relational reasoning: The development of the Latin Square task. Educational & Psychological Measurement, 66, 146–171.
Braine, M. D. S., & O’Brien, D. P. (Eds.) (1998). Mental logic. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Cheng, P. W., & Holyoak, K. J. (1985). Pragmatic reasoning schemas. Cognitive Psychology, 17, 391–416.
Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., Fiddick, L., & Bryant, G. A. (2005). Detecting cheaters. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 505–506.
Goodwin, G. P., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2005). Reasoning about relations. Psychological Review, 112, 468–493.
Halford, G. S. (1993). Children’s understanding: The development of mental models. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Halford, G. S., Wilson, W. H., & Phillips, S. (1998). Processing capacity defined by relational complexity: Implications for comparative, developmental, and cognitive psychology. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 21, 803–831.
Handley, S. J., Evans, J. St. B. T., & Thompson, V. A. (2006). The negated conditional: A litmus test for the suppositional conditional? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 32, 559–569.
Hertwig, R., Ortmann, A., & Gigerenzer, G. (1997). Deductive competence: A desert devoid of content and context. Current Psychology of Cognition, 16, 102–107.
Jeffrey, R. C. (1981). Formal logic: Its scope and limits (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1983). Mental models: Towards a cognitive science of language, inference, and consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2006). How we reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Byrne, R. M. J. (1991). Deduction. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Savary, F. (1999). Illusory inferences: A novel class of erroneous deductions. Cognition, 71, 191–229.
Khemlani, S., Orenes, I., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2009). Negation: A theory of its meaning, use, and interpretation. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Lee, N. Y. L., Goodwin, G. P., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2008). The psychological problem of Sudoku. Thinking & Reasoning, 14, 342–364.
Oaksford, M., & Chater, N. (2001). The probabilistic approach to human reasoning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5, 349–357.
Polk, T. A., & Newell, A. (1995). Deduction as verbal reasoning. Psychological Review, 102, 533–566.
Rips, L. J. (1994). The psychology of proof: Deductive reasoning in human thinking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rips, L. J. (1997). Goals for a theory of deduction: Reply to Johnson-Laird. Minds & Machines, 7, 409–424.
Stenning, K., & van Lambalgen, M. (2008). Human reasoning and cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wetherick, N. E., & Gilhooly, K. J. (1995). “Atmosphere,” matching, and logic in syllogistic reasoning. Current Psychology, 14, 169–178.
Yang, Y., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2000). How to eliminate illusions in quantified reasoning. Memory & Cognition, 28, 1050–1059.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to the first author and by National Science Foundation Grant DRMS 0844851.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Khemlani, S., Johnson-Laird, P.N. Disjunctive illusory inferences and how to eliminate them. Memory & Cognition 37, 615–623 (2009). https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.37.5.615
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.37.5.615