Some scales require cognitive effort: A systematic review on the role of working memory in scalar implicature derivation.

If some inferences require cognitive effort, could that mean, that all of them do? The scalar term "some" has long fascinated academics from various backgrounds, as it can be interpreted either purely semantically, as "some and possibly all", or pragmatically, as "some and not all". The pragmatic reading implies the generation of what is called a scalar implicature. While scientific investigation of such implicatures has given rise to many potential explanations of the "pragmatic enrichment" phenomenon behind them, the debate between the two dominant frameworks-the literal-first and the default accounts-has not convincingly been settled. With the birth of a new interdisciplinary field, appropriately dubbed experimental pragmatics, the last 20 years have led to a substantial amount of new empirical data on scalar implicatures. In this ongoing investigation, the loading and measuring of Working Memory has become an important experimentation tool, as it allows to test the contrasting hypotheses with regard to the cognitive effort of implicature generation, which are made by the two main theoretical accounts. The current systematic review evaluates the relevant literature until March 08, 2022 in an attempt to shed light on the role of Working Memory in implicature derivation. A comprehensive search, and two-step review procedure yielded a sample of 18 studies, containing data of 23 relevant experiments. Findings were bundled in a narrative synthesis and combined through two separate meta-analyses. Our results support the literal-first account, by showing that the derivation of scalar implicatures is a cognitively effortful process that is sensitive to changes in the available Working Memory resources. However, as the reported effects are relatively weak and capricious, we argue that the development of more sophisticated paradigms and eventually, stronger theories within the field, will be crucial in order to both fully understand the current results and set-up fruitful future research.

Motor imagery and engagement favour spatial reasoning.

Based on the assumption that spatial reasoning relies on the construction of mental models of the states of affairs described in the premises, and on evidence that sensory-motor imagery can enhance cognitive abilities, we hypothesised that imagining moving the objects mentioned in the premises to the specific spatial locations should favour spatial reasoning. The results of Experiment 1 confirmed the prediction: when participants imagined moving the objects mentioned in the premises (dynamic-engagement condition), they drew accurate inferences faster compared with participants who merely read the premises (static-non-engagement condition). Experiment 2 was in part a replication of Experiment 1 but included two additional experimental conditions to control for possible effects of self-engagement in reasoning: in one condition, participants imagined that someone else was moving the objects (dynamic-non-engagement condition), and in the other condition, participants imagined that they were observing the objects (static-engagement condition). The results revealed an interaction between motor imagery and engagement in decreasing response times to spatial problems. We discuss the practical implications of the current results.

Find extra options or reason badly: An investigation of children's reasoning with incompatibility statements.

The false dilemma or dichotomy is a logical fallacy that occurs when interlocuters accept the premises in an incompatibility statement as being jointly exhaustive (i.e., leaving no third option), whereas that is in fact not the case. Brisson et al. [Memory & Cognition (2018), Vol. 46, pp. 657-670] investigated this fallacy in an adult sample and discovered a content effect that influenced participants' performance. The current study aimed to elaborate on these findings by establishing whether similar patterns could be observed with children. A number of age-appropriate incompatibility premises were constructed. For every item, four different inferential problems were presented (Affirm First, Affirm Second, Deny First, and Deny Second) with three potential answers to choose from (X, not X, or uncertainty regarding X). A sample of 192 volunteer children, with ages ranging from 8 to 13 years, was collected. Statistical analysis showed no significant effect for participants' age but did reveal main effects for premise validity and the amount of available "third options" (possibilities outside of the presented dichotomy). These results are a clear replication of the general effects on adults found by Brisson et al. Affirm inferences were also easy for children, Deny inferences were difficult (even more so than for adults), and content had a profound effect on participants' performance. Whenever more third options could be generated, children were less likely to fall into the false dilemma fallacy. Our findings thus further support the idea that reasoning with incompatibilities is influenced by the same semantic retrieval processes that have been previously related to human conditional reasoning.

The Role of Working Memory in the Processing of Scalar Implicatures of Patients With Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders.

A number of studies have demonstrated pragmatic language difficulties in people with Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders. However, research about how people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders understand scalar implicatures (SIs) is surprisingly rare, since SIs have generated much of the most recent literature. Scalar implicatures are pragmatic inferences, based on linguistic expressions like some, must, or, which are part of a scale of informativeness (e.g., some/many/all). Logically, the less informative expressions imply the more informative ones, but pragmatically people usually infer that the presence of a less informative term implies that the more informative term was not applicable. In one of the few existing studies with people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders, Wampers et al. (2018) observed that in general, people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders were less likely to derive SIs than controls. The current study has three main aims. First, we want to replicate the original finding with the scalar terms some-all. Second, we want to investigate how these patients deal with different scalar terms, that is, we want to investigate if scalar diversity is also observed in this clinical group. Third, we investigate the role of working memory, often seen as another important mechanism to enable inferring SIs. Twenty-one individuals with a psychotic disorder and 21 matched controls answered 54 under-informative statements, in which seven different pairs of scalar terms were used. In addition, working memory capacity was measured. Patients with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders did not make more logical interpretations when processing quantifiers, disconfirming Wampers et al. (2018). However, certain scalar scales elicited more pragmatic interpretations than others, which is in line with the scalar diversity hypothesis. Additionally, we observed only partial evidence for the role of working memory. Only for the scalar scale and-or, a significant effect of working memory was observed. The implications of these results for patients with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders are discussed, but also the role of working memory for pragmatic inferences, as well as the place of SIs in experimental pragmatics.

What is the contribution of executive functions to communicative-pragmatic skills? Insights from aging and different types of pragmatic inference.

The role of executive functions in supporting the pragmatics of communication has been extensively examined in clinical populations, but is still under-explored in healthy aging. In this study we addressed the role of executive skills, including inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, in older adults' communicative-pragmatic abilities. Pragmatics was extensively assessed by measuring the understanding of figurative language, narrative texts, humor, and implicatures. A hierarchical regression analysis using composite scores evidenced a global effect of executive functions on communicative-pragmatic abilities, beyond demographic and theory of mind aspects. More fine-grained analyses showed that working memory was the strongest predictor of all pragmatic tasks. Specifically, comprehending narratives and humor seemed to capitalize primarily upon working memory, whereas figurative language and implicatures relied on working memory and to some extent cognitive flexibility. Conversely, inhibition did not stand out as a robust predictor of pragmatics. We argue that working memory allows for the simultaneous consideration of multiple pieces of information needed for pragmatic inferencing, and that only once working memory has played its role other executive aspects, such as cognitive flexibility and inhibition, might come into play. Overall, this study highlights the diverse role of executive skills in pragmatics in aging, and more generally contributes to shed light on pragmatic competence in older adults.

Conflict Detection and Logical Complexity.

Empirical evidence for the capacity to detect conflict between biased reasoning and normative principles has led to the proposal that reasoners have an intuitive grasp of some basic logical principles. In two studies, we investigate the boundary conditions of these logical intuitions by manipulating the logical complexity of problems where logical validity and conclusion believability conflict or not. Results pointed to evidence for successful conflict detection on the basic Modus Ponens (MP) inference, but also showed evidence for such a phenomenon on the more complex Modus Tollens (MT) inference. This suggests that both the MP and the MT inferences are simple enough for reasoners to have an intuitive grasp of their logical structure. The boundaries of logical intuition might thus reside in problems of greater complexity than these inferences. We also observed that on the invalid Affirmation of the Consequent (AC) and Denial of the Antecedent (DA) inferences, participants showed higher accuracy on the inference that was expected to be more complex (DA), and no evidence for successful conflict detection was found on these forms. Implications for the logical intuition framework are discussed.

Why Humans Fail in Solving the Monty Hall Dilemma: A Systematic Review.

The Monty Hall dilemma (MHD) is a difficult brain teaser. We present a systematic review of literature published between January 2000 and February 2018 addressing why humans systematically fail to react optimally to the MHD or fail to understand it. Based on a sequential analysis of the phases in the MHD, we first review causes in each of these phases that may prohibit humans to react optimally and to fully understand the problem. Next, we address the question whether humans' performance, in terms of choice behaviour and (probability) understanding, can be improved. Finally, we discuss individual differences related to people's suboptimal performance. This review provides novel insights by means of its holistic approach of the MHD: At each phase, there are reasons to expect that people respond suboptimally. Given that the occurrence of only one cause is sufficient, it is not surprising that suboptimal responses are so widespread and people rarely understand the MHD.

The Understanding of Scalar Implicatures in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Dichotomized Responses to Violations of Informativeness.

This study investigated the understanding of underinformative sentences like "Some elephants have trunks" by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The scalar term 'some' can be interpreted pragmatically, 'Not all elephants have trunks,' or logically, 'Some and possibly all elephants have trunks.' Literature indicates that adults with ASD show no real difficulty in interpreting scalar implicatures, i.e., they often interpret them pragmatically, as controls do. This contrasts with the traditional claim of difficulties of people with ASD in other pragmatic domains, and is more in line with the idea that pragmatic problems are not universal. The aim of this study was to: (a) gain insight in the ability of children with ASD to derive scalar implicatures, and (b) do this by assessing not only sensitivity to underinformativeness, but also different degrees of tolerance to violations of informativeness. We employed a classic statement-evaluation task, presenting optimal, logical false, and underinformative utterances. In Experiment 1, children had to express their judgment on a binary option 'I agree' vs. 'I disagree.' In Experiment 2, a ternary middle answer option 'I agree a bit' was also available. Sixty-six Flemish-speaking 10-year-old children were tested: 22 children with ASD, an IQ-matched group, and an age-matched group. In the binary judgment task, the ASD group gave more pragmatic answers than the other groups, which was significant in the mixed effects logistic regression analysis, although not in the non-parametric analysis. In the ternary judgment task, the children with ASD showed a dichotomized attitude toward the speaker's meaning, by tending to either fully agree or fully disagree with underinformative statements, in contrast with TD children, who preferred the middle option. Remarkably, the IQ-matched group exhibited the same pattern of results as the ASD group. Thanks to a fine-grained measure such as the ternary judgment task, this study highlighted a neglected aspect of the pragmatic profile of ASD, whose struggle with social communication seems to affect also the domain of informativeness. We discuss the implications of the dichotomized reaction toward violations of informativeness in terms of the potential role of ASD and of cognitive and verbal abilities.

Reasoning from an incompatibility: False dilemma fallacies and content effects.

In the present studies, we investigated inferences from an incompatibility statement. Starting with two propositions that cannot be true at the same time, these inferences consist of deducing the falsity of one from the truth of the other or deducing the truth of one from the falsity of the other. Inferences of this latter form are relevant to human reasoning since they are the formal equivalent of a discourse manipulation called the false dilemma fallacy, often used in politics and advertising in order to force a choice between two selected options. Based on research on content-related variability in conditional reasoning, we predicted that content would have an impact on how reasoners treat incompatibility inferences. Like conditional inferences, they present two invalid forms for which the logical response is one of uncertainty. We predicted that participants would endorse a smaller proportion of the invalid incompatibility inferences when more counterexamples are available. In Study 1, we found the predicted pattern using causal premises translated into incompatibility statements with many and few counterexamples. In Study 2A, we replicated the content effects found in Study 1, but with premises for which the incompatibility statement is a non-causal relation between classes. These results suggest that the tendency to fall into the false dilemma fallacy is modulated by the background knowledge of the reasoner. They also provide additional evidence on the link between semantic information retrieval and deduction.

Patients with psychosis struggle with scalar implicatures.

Pragmatic language difficulties in people with psychosis have been demonstrated repeatedly but one of the most studied types of pragmatic language, i.e. scalar implicatures (SIs), has not yet been examined in this population. SIs are a special kind of pragmatic inferences, based on linguistic expressions like some, or, must. Such expressions are part of a scale of informativeness organized by informativity (e.g. some/many/all). Although semantically the less informative expressions imply the more informative ones, pragmatically people generally infer that the use of a less informative expression implies that the more informative option is not applicable. Based on the pragmatic language difficulties of people with psychosis we hypothesized that they may be less likely to derive these pragmatic SIs. We conducted two studies in which the ability of people with psychosis to derive SIs was compared to that of healthy controls matched for age and educational level. In the second study we additionally explored the possible link between the capacity to derive SIs and theory of mind (ToM) ability. In general, people with psychosis were less likely to derive SIs than controls. However, the patient group was not homogeneous: half had problems deriving SIs, the other half did not. This dichotomization seems linked to ToM ability because in the patient group, better ToM was associated with a higher ability to derive SIs. Based on the nature of the stimuli used in the SI-task we speculate that this link may not be a direct but an indirect one.

Development of Quantitative and Temporal Scalar Implicatures in a Felicity Judgment Task.

Experimental investigations into children's interpretation of scalar terms show that children have difficulties with scalar implicatures in tasks. In contrast with adults, they are for instance not able to derive the pragmatic interpretation that "some" means "not all" (Noveck, 2001; Papafragou and Musolino, 2003). However, there is also substantial experimental evidence that children are not incapable of drawing scalar inferences and that they are aware of the pragmatic potential of scalar expressions. In these kinds of studies, the prime interest is to discover what conditions facilitate implicature production for children. One of the factors that seem to be difficult for children is the generation of the scalar alternative. In a Felicity Judgment Task (FJT) the alternative is given. Participants are presented with a pair of utterances and asked to choose the most felicitous description. In such a task, even 5-year-old children are reported to show a very good performance. Our study wants to build on this tradition, by using a FJT where not only "some-all" choices are given, but also "some-many" and "many-all." In combination with a manipulation of the number of successes/failures in the stories, this enabled us to construct control, critical and ambiguous items. We compared the performance of 59 5-year-old children with that of 34 11-year-old children. The results indicated that performance of both age groups was clearly above chance, replicating previous findings. However, for the 5-year-old children, the critical and ambiguous items were more difficult than the control items and they also performed worse on these two types of items than the 11-year-old children. Interestingly with respect to the issue of scalar diversity, the 11-year-old children were also presented temporal items, which turned out to be more difficult than the quantitative ones.

Processing Conversational Implicatures: Alternatives and Counterfactual Reasoning.

In a series of experiments, Bott and Noveck (2004) found that the computation of scalar inferences, a variety of conversational implicature, caused a delay in response times. In order to determine what aspect of the inferential process that underlies scalar inferences caused this delay, we extended their paradigm to three other kinds of inferences: free choice inferences, conditional perfection, and exhaustivity in "it"-clefts. In contrast to scalar inferences, the computation of these three kinds of inferences facilitated response times. Following a suggestion made by Chemla and Bott (2014), we propose that the time it takes to compute a conversational implicature depends on the structural characteristics of the required alternatives.

'But' Implicatures: A Study of the Effect of Working Memory and Argument Characteristics.

This study aimed to investigate the possible cognitive costs involved in processing the implicatures from but and the conclusion introducing words so and nevertheless. Adult participants were asked to indicate the conclusion that the person in the story would make, based on 'p but q' sentences constructed as indirect distancing contrasts. Additionally, while performing this task, participants' working memory was burdened with a secondary dot recall task in four conditions ranging from no working memory load to high load. The results showed that working memory load did not influence participants' performance on the implicature task. This finding might be interpreted to suggest that working memory is not involved in inferring the implicatures from but, so, and nevertheless. We also found that the content of the arguments played a very important role. Whenever a strong argument is combined with a weak argument, participants mostly base their conclusion on the strong argument and consequently ignore the conventional interpretation of but (and so and nevertheless). Additionally, we found an effect of axiological value, which is in line with the positive-negative asymmetry theory.

Disentangling Metaphor from Context: An ERP Study.

A large body of electrophysiological literature showed that metaphor comprehension elicits two different event-related brain potential responses, namely the so-called N400 and P600 components. Yet most of these studies test metaphor in isolation while in natural conversation metaphors do not come out of the blue but embedded in linguistic and extra-linguistic context. This study aimed at assessing the role of context in the metaphor comprehension process. We recorded EEG activity while participants were presented with metaphors and equivalent literal expressions in a minimal context (Experiment 1) and in a supportive context where the word expressing the ground between the metaphor's topic and vehicle was made explicit (Experiment 2). The N400 effect was visible only in minimal context, whereas the P600 was visible both in the absence and in the presence of contextual cues. These findings suggest that the N400 observed for metaphor is related to contextual aspects, possibly indexing contextual expectations on upcoming words that guide lexical access and retrieval, while the P600 seems to reflect truly pragmatic interpretative processes needed to make sense of a metaphor and derive the speaker's meaning, also in the presence of contextual cues. In sum, previous information in the linguistic context biases toward a metaphorical interpretation but does not suppress interpretative pragmatic mechanisms to establish the intended meaning.

Considering too few alternatives: The mental model theory of extensional reasoning.

When solving a simple probabilistic problem, people tend to build an incomplete mental representation. We observe this pattern in responses to probabilistic problems over a set of premises using the conjunction, disjunction, and conditional propositional connectives. The mental model theory of extensional reasoning explains this bias towards underestimating the number of possibilities: In reckoning with different interpretations of the premises (logical rules, mental model theoretical, and, specific to conditional premises, conjunction and biconditional interpretation) the mental model theory accounts for the majority of observations. Different interpretations of a premise result in a build-up of mental models that are often incomplete. These mental models are processed using either an extensional strategy relying on proportions amongst models, or a conflict monitoring strategy. The consequence of considering too few possibilities is an erroneous probability estimate akin to that faced by decision makers who fail to generate and consider all alternatives, a characteristic of bounded rationality. We compare our results to the results published by Johnson-Laird, Legrenzi, Girotto, Legrenzi, and Caverni [Johnson-Laird, P., Legrenzi, P., Girotto, V., Legrenzi, M., & Caverni, J. (1999). Naive probability: A mental model theory of extensional reasoning. Psychological Review, 106, 62-88. doi: 10. 1037/0033-295X.106.1.62], and we observe lower performance levels than those in the original article.

Some Differences in Some: Examining Variability in the Interpretation of Scalars Using Latent Class Analysis.

The present study investigated people's understanding of underinformative sentences like 'Some oaks are trees'. Specifically, the scalar term 'some' can be interpreted pragmatically, Not all oaks are trees, or logically, some and possibly all oaks are trees. The aim of this study was to capture the interindividual variability in the interpretation of such sentences. In two experiments, participants provided truth value judgments for 20 underinformative sentences on which a latent class analysis was performed. The results revealed three latent classes: a consistent pragmatic group, a consistent logical group and an inconsistent group. Furthermore, we examined whether this interindividual variability could be explained by text characteristics, response times, cognitive abilities and personality traits. The results showed that only participants' response times to the underinformative sentences could predict class membership. Specifically, the slower participants responded, the more likely they were to interpret underinformative sentences consistently pragmatic or inconsistent instead of consistently logical.

But: do age and working memory influence conventional implicature processing?

Conventional implicatures are omnipresent in daily life communication but experimental research on this topic is sparse, especially research with children. The aim of this study was to investigate if eight- to twelve-year-old children spontaneously make the conventional implicature induced by but, so, and nevertheless in 'p but q' sentences. Additionally, the study aimed to shed light on the cognitive effort required for these inferences by measuring working memory (WM) capacity. Our results show that children do make these inferences to a certain extent, but are sensitive to the content of the arguments. We found a significant effect of sentence type, but did not observe any developmental effect, nor any effect of WM: a higher age or WM capacity does not result in more pragmatic inferences.

'Some' Effects of Age, Task, Task Content and Working Memory on Scalar Implicature Processing.

In three experiments, we investigated the effect of age, task, task content and working memory (WM) on scalar implicature processing. We found that three-year-olds still often interpret the scalar term 'some' logically (some being compatible with all), but five-year-olds and especially seven-year-olds are highly competent pragmatic reasoners. Additionally we found that not only the nature of the task but also the specific task content influences the number of pragmatic answers: an Action-Based-Task (ABT) leads to more pragmatic answers than a metalinguistic Truth-Value Judgment Task (TVJT) that, in turn, leads to more pragmatic answers than a different TVJT that includes more cognitive content. Finally, we found no effect of WM in both five-year-olds and seven-year-olds. Children with a high WM capacity did not provide significantly more pragmatic answers than children with a low WM capacity.

Some effort for some: further evidence that scalar implicatures are effortful.

Under the assumption of the principle of cooperation (Grice, 1989), a statement such as "some eels are fish" is thought to be false since it contains less information than is considered sufficient. However, the statement is logically sound since the meaning of "some" is compatible with "all". Currently, the primary interpretation of such underinformative statements remains subject to debate. According to Levinson (2000), the pragmatic "some but not all" interpretation is the default interpretation, while others (e.g., Sperber & Wilson, 1995) argue that this pragmatic interpretation only comes to the fore when relevant within the context and is thus considered secondary to the logical "some and perhaps all" interpretation. In this study, three factors that may influence the answer pattern are studied: task load, working memory capacity, and repetition of the statements. In Experiment 1, we used a secondary task paradigm to manipulate the cognitive load under which a number of underinformative statements had to be judged. We observed that for participants with a rather limited working memory span it is harder to reach a pragmatic interpretation under cognitive load. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the repetition of the statements. We observed that with a higher number of filler statements, participants produced fewer consistent answer patterns. This study provides further evidence against the automaticity of the pragmatic interpretation: It shows that the pragmatic interpretation requires more cognitive effort than the logical interpretation and that increasing the number of filler statements inhibits the development of a response strategy.

Proportional reasoning as a heuristic-based process: time constraint and dual task considerations.

The present study interprets the overuse of proportional solution methods from a dual process framework. Dual process theories claim that analytic operations involve time-consuming executive processing, whereas heuristic operations are fast and automatic. In two experiments to test whether proportional reasoning is heuristic-based, the participants solved "proportional" problems, for which proportional solution methods provide correct answers, and "nonproportional" problems known to elicit incorrect answers based on the assumption of proportionality. In Experiment 1, the available solution time was restricted. In Experiment 2, the executive resources were burdened with a secondary task. Both manipulations induced an increase in proportional answers and a decrease in correct answers to nonproportional problems. These results support the hypothesis that the choice for proportional methods is heuristic-based.