Auditory hindsight bias in school-age children.

We report two experiments investigating hindsight bias in children, focusing on a rarely studied age range of 8-13 years. In Experiment 1, we asked children to complete both an auditory hindsight task and a visual hindsight task. Children exhibited hindsight bias in both tasks, and the bias decreased with age. In Experiment 2, we further explored children 's auditory hindsight bias by contrasting performance in hypothetical and memory designs (which previous research with adults had found to involve different mechanisms-fluency vs. memory reconstruction). Children exhibited auditory hindsight bias in both tasks, but only in the hypothetical design was the bias magnitude modulated by a priming manipulation designed to increase fluency, replicating and extending the pattern found in adults to children.

Inferences from the negation of counterfactual and semifactual conditionals.

Our goal was to study how people understand the negation of counterfactuals (such as "Antonio denied/said that it is false that if Messi had played, then Barcelona would have won") and semifactuals (such as "Antonio denied that even if Messi had played, Barcelona would have won"). Previous studies have shown that participants negated basic conditionals using small-scope interpretations by endorsing a new conditional with the negated consequent, but also by making large-scope interpretations, endorsing a conjunction with the negated consequent. Three experiments showed that when participants were asked whether the negation of a counterfactual (Experiments 1 and 2) or semifactual (Experiment 3) conditional was followed by a new conditional, they made a small-scope interpretation, endorsing the same conditional with the negated consequent (e.g., "if/even if Messi had played, Barcelona would not have won"). However, they also accepted the conditional with the negated antecedent for semifactuals (e.g., "even if Messi had not played, Barcelona would have won"). When participants were asked whether the negation of a counterfactual or semifactual conditional is followed by a conjunction, they endorsed the conjunction with both the negated antecedent and the consequent (e.g., "Messi did not play and Barcelona did not win"), but again they accepted the conjunction with the negated antecedent only for semifactuals (e.g., "Messi did not play and Barcelona did win"). These results have implications for the main theories of reasoning.

Signalling Three-Way Intersections: Is Redundancy Better Than Only Mandatory or Prohibitory Signs?

At intersections, drivers need to infer which ways are allowed by interpreting mandatory and/or prohibitory traffic signs. Time and accuracy in this decision-making process are crucial factors to avoid accidents. Previous studies show that integrating information from prohibitory signs is generally more difficult than from mandatory signs. In Study 1, we compare combined redundant signalling conditions to simple sign conditions at three-way intersections. In Study 2, we carried out a survey among professionals responsible for signposting to test whether common practices are consistent with experimental research. In Study 1, an experimental task was applied (n=24), and in Study 2, the survey response rate was 17%. These included the main cities in Spain such as Madrid and Barcelona. Study 1 showed that inferences with mandatory signs are faster than those with prohibitory signs, and redundant information is an improvement only on prohibitory signs. In Study 2, prohibitory signs were those most frequently chosen by professionals responsible for signposting. In conclusion, the most used signs, according to the laboratory study, were not the best ones for signposting because the faster responses were obtained for mandatory signs, and in second place for redundant signs.

Conditional content, explicit information and generating cases: Sources for suppressing inferences.

In the present study, we evaluate the suppression effect by asking participants to make inferences with everyday conditionals ("if A, then B"; "if Ana finds a friend, then she will go to the theatre"), choosing between three possible conclusions ("she went to the theatre"; "she did not go to the theatre"; "it cannot be concluded"). We test how these inferences can be influenced by three factors: a) when the content of the conditional induces us to think about disabling conditions that prevent us from accepting the consequent (A and ¬B) or alternative conditions that induce us to think about other antecedents that could also lead to the consequent (¬A and B), b) when explicit information is given about what really happened (e.g. Ana found a friend but they did not go to the theatre; or Ana did not find a friend but she went to the theatre) and c) when participants have to look for concrete disabling (e.g. Ana's friend had to work) and alternative cases (e.g. Ana's sister wanted to go to the theatre) before making the inferences. Previous studies have shown what were called "suppression effects": disabling conditions reduced valid inferences while considering alternatives led to a reduction in fallacies. These two "suppression effects" were shown in Experiment 1: a) in an Implicit condition that included just the content factor of the conditional and b) with a greater magnitude in a second Explicit condition that included the three factors (content, explicit information and search for counterexamples). Experiment 2 compared the same Explicit condition with another in which participants, instead of looking for counterexamples, completed a control task of looking for synonyms. In addition, half the participants looked for a few items (2 cases) and the other half for many items (5 cases). Results again showed the suppressing effect in all the conditions, but the magnitude was greater in the counterexample condition. No relevant differences were obtained according to the number of cases generated; the most relevant result was that the factors provided an additive effect on the suppression.

How children and adults keep track of real information when thinking counterfactually.

Thinking about counterfactual conditionals such as "if she had not painted the sheet of paper, it would have been blank" requires us to consider what is conjectured (She did not paint and the sheet was blank) and what actually happened (She painted and the sheet was not blank). In two experiments with adults (Study 1) and schoolchildren from 7 to 13 years (Study 2), we tested three potential sources of difficulty with counterfactuals: inferring, distinguishing what is real vs conjectured (epistemic status) and comprehending linguistic conditional expressions ("if" vs "even if"). The results showed that neither adults nor schoolchildren had difficulty in the comprehension of counterfactual expressions such as "even if" with respect to "if then". The ability to infer with both of these develops during school years, with adults showing great ability. However, the third source factor is critical: we found that the key to young children's difficulty with counterfactual thinking was their inability to differentiate real and conjectured information, while adults showed little difficulty with this.

Testing the visual impedance effect in children with and without reading difficulties using a new visual reasoning task.

This study examined reasoning skills in children, specifically transitive reasoning and the visual impedance effect, with a new visual/pictorial task. The visual impedance effect is the effect produced by the possible interference in the reasoning process of irrelevant details elicited from the premises of a reasoning task. The new task had no reading requirements, which made it suitable for testing reasoning in primary school children, especially children with reading difficulties (RD), such as dyslexia. The study aimed also to validate the possible use of the task for studying reasoning and detecting the visual impedance effect without the interference of reading skills and to investigate the association between transitive reasoning and reading abilities. A pilot study (N = 10) was used to test the suitability of the new task for primary school children. Afterwards, the task was tested on a larger sample of children of third to sixth Grade, with and without RD (N = 84). Results showed that the new task is able to detect the main reasoning effects as well as the visual impedance effect. The findings are discussed, with the new task considered appropriate for studying reasoning skills in child populations both with and without RD.

Reasoning and Reading in Adults. A New Reasoning Task for Detecting the Visual Impendance Effect.

The visual impedance hypothesis states that at the time of reasoning, the reading context provokes visual images, which may add irrelevant details to an inference and thus could hamper reasoning. This study aims to create a new visual version of a reasoning task, similar to the traditional propositional task of relational syllogisms, but based on visuospatial components. Using such a task, it would be possible to investigate the deductive ability of relational inferences in tests without the need for reading. Two reasoning tasks were used and measures of working memory, visuospatial memory, intelligence, and reading comprehension were taken. The participants were 61 university students without reading difficulties. Results show that both versions of the reasoning task work similarly in finding the main reasoning effects expected. Findings support the visual impedance effect, that is, fewer correct responses in problems with imaginable contents than with neutral ones. They indicate that this new visual task could be used to explore reasoning skills without reading being involved, and this would be useful for testing reasoning in people both with and without reading difficulties.

Thinking about social and nonsocial alternative possibilities in premature preschoolers.

INTRODUCTION: Prematurely born preschoolers show developmental cognitive delay compared to full-term children. There are important neurological networks developing at preschool age related to perspective taking about the attribution of belief and to deduction with contrary-to-fact situations. Other deductive abilities may be completed during that period. METHOD: A group of very prematurely born children (N = 35) aged between 4 and 5 years was compared with a control group of children born at full term (N = 35). They completed different cognitive tasks that required making inferences about possible true facts and false facts, and about others' beliefs. RESULTS: Results showed that preterm children had more difficulties with false beliefs and counterfactual tasks than the controls but they did not differ in equivalent deductive tasks. CONCLUSIONS: We discuss the possible difficulties of preterm children when they first reach primary school age, not only with social perspective taking, but also with considering nonsocial contrary-to-fact alternatives. Prematurity is not a syndrome, but could be a risk condition. Therefore, these results are relevant in the field of differential diagnosis-in particular, for children with difficulties in perspective taking, a condition with which children born prematurely could share some characteristics.

Concessive and semifactual interpretations during reasoning with multiple conditionals.

The present research evaluates how people integrate factual 'if then' and semifactual 'even if' conditional premises in an inference task. The theory of mental models establishes that semifactual statements are represented by two mental models with different epistemic status: 'A & B' is conjectured and 'not-A & B' is presupposed. However, following the principle of cognitive economy in tasks with a high working memory load such as reasoning with multiple conditionals, people could simplify the deduction process in two ways, by discarding: (a) the presupposed case and/or (b) the epistemic status information. In Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, we evaluated each of these hypotheses. In Experiment 1, participants make inferences from two conditionals: two factual conditionals or one factual and one semifactual, with different representations. In Experiment 2, participants make inferences with a factual conditional followed by two different semifactual conditionals that share the same representations but differ in their epistemic status. Accuracy and latency data suggest that people think of both the conjectured and the presupposed situations, but do not codify the epistemic status of either when the task does not require it. The results are discussed through theoretical predictions about how people make inferences from different connected conditionals.

Inhibitory mechanism of the matching heuristic in syllogistic reasoning.

A number of heuristic-based hypotheses have been proposed to explain how people solve syllogisms with automatic processes. In particular, the matching heuristic employs the congruency of the quantifiers in a syllogism­by matching the quantifier of the conclusion with those of the two premises. When the heuristic leads to an invalid conclusion, successful solving of these conflict problems requires the inhibition of automatic heuristic processing. Accordingly, if the automatic processing were based on processing the set of quantifiers, no semantic contents would be inhibited. The mental model theory, however, suggests that people reason using mental models, which always involves semantic processing. Therefore, whatever inhibition occurs in the processing implies the inhibition of the semantic contents. We manipulated the validity of the syllogism and the congruency of the quantifier of its conclusion with those of the two premises according to the matching heuristic. A subsequent lexical decision task (LDT) with related words in the conclusion was used to test any inhibition of the semantic contents after each syllogistic evaluation trial. In the LDT, the facilitation effect of semantic priming diminished after correctly solved conflict syllogisms (match-invalid or mismatch-valid), but was intact after no-conflict syllogisms. The results suggest the involvement of an inhibitory mechanism of semantic contents in syllogistic reasoning when there is a conflict between the output of the syntactic heuristic and actual validity. Our results do not support a uniquely syntactic process of syllogistic reasoning but fit with the predictions based on mental model theory.

Perceptual inferences about indeterminate arrangements of figures.

Previous studies in spatial propositional reasoning showed that adults use a particular strategy for making representations and inferences from indeterminate descriptions (those consistent with different alternatives). They do not initially represent all the alternatives, but construct a unified mental representation that includes a kind of mental footnote. Only when the task requires access to alternatives is the unified representation re-inspected. The degree of generalisation of this proposal to other perceptual situations was evaluated in three experiments with children, adolescents and adults, using a perceptual inference task with diagrammatic premises that gave information about the location of one of three possible objects. Results obtained with this very quick perceptual task support the kind of representation proposed from propositional spatial reasoning studies. However, children and adults differed in accuracy, with the results gradually changing with age: indeterminacy leads adults to require extra time for understanding and inferring alternatives, whereas children commit errors. These results could help inform us of how people can make inferences from diagrammatic information and make wrong interpretations.

The influence of differences in the functioning of the neurocognitive attentional networks on drivers' performance.

Considerable research efforts are currently being devoted to analysing the role that the attentional system plays in determining driving behaviour, with the ultimate objective of reducing the number of attention-related accidents. The present study aims to assess the influence of differences in the functioning of the three attentional networks (executive control, attentional orienting and alerting) when drivers have to deal with some common hazardous situations, for example, when an oncoming car or a pedestrian unexpectedly crosses their trajectory. Multiple measures of participants' attentional functioning were obtained from a computer-based neurocognitive test: the Attention Networks Test for Interactions and Vigilance (ANTI-V). These measures were compared to performance in a driving simulator where different types of hazardous situations were presented. Correlation and linear regression analyses revealed significant associations between individual attentional measures and driving performance in specific traffic situations. In particular, a higher attentional orienting score on the ANTI-V was associated with safer driving in situations where a single precursor anticipated the hazard source, whereas in complex situations with multiple potential hazard precursors, higher attentional orienting scores were associated with delayed braking. Additionally, partial evidence of a relationship between crash occurrence and the functioning of the executive control and the alerting networks was found. Overall, the current research would be helpful to better understand the role that each attentional network (executive control, attentional orienting and alerting) play in safe driving, and thus to develop efficient countermeasures to reduce attention-related crashes.

A driving-emulation task to study the integration of goals with obligatory and prohibitory traffic signs.

This research aims to analyse how drivers integrate the information provided by traffic signs with their general goals (i.e. where they want to go). Some previous studies have evaluated the comparative advantages of obligatory and prohibitory traffic signs using a judgement task. In this work, a new experimental task with greater similarity to driving situations is proposed. Participants imagine they are driving a vehicle and must make right or left turn manoeuvres according to a previously indicated objective and the information from obligatory and prohibitory traffic signs. Eighty-two participants took part in two different experiments. According to the results, an obligatory traffic sign is associated with faster and more accurate responses only when the participant's initial objective is allowed. When the initial objective was not allowed, an advantage in accuracy was observed with prohibitory traffic signs and there was no significant difference in reaction time between the two types of sign. These results suggest that having an obligatory traffic sign may facilitate a correct response when the driver's goal is effectively allowed, whereas a prohibitory traffic sign could be more effective in preventing error when the driver has a not-allowed goal in mind. However, processing a prohibitory sign requires an extra inference (i.e. deciding which is the allowed manoeuvre), and thus the potential advantage in reaction time of the prohibitory sign may disappear. A second experiment showed that the results could not be explained by a potential congruency effect between the location (left or right) of the road signs and the position of the key or the hand used to respond (such as the Simon effect or the spatial Stroop effect). Also, an increase in the difficulty of the task (using an incongruent hand to respond) affected performance more strongly in experimental conditions that required making inferences. This made the advantage of the obligatory sign over the prohibitory sign in this condition more noteworthy. The evidence gathered in the current study could be of particular interest in some applied research areas, such as the assessment of road traffic signalling strategies or the ergonomic design of GPS navigation systems.

Cost of mental set reconfiguration between digits and their photisms in synaesthesia.

In this study we present an experiment investigating the reconfiguration process elicited by the task switching paradigm in synaesthesia. We study the time course of the operations involved in the activation of photisms. In the experimental Group, four digit-color synaesthetes alternated between an odd-even task and a color task (to indicate the photism elicited by each digit). In both tasks, the target stimuli were numbers between 1 and 9 written in white. One of the control groups ran the same tasks but this time with colored numbers (Naive Control Group). The results of these studies showed the expected pattern for the control group in the case of regular shift: a significant task switch cost with an abrupt offset and a cost reduction in long RSI. However for the experimental group, we found switch cost asymmetry in the short RSI and non-significant cost in the long RSI. A second control group performed exactly the same tasks as the experimental group (with white numbers as targets and a second imaginary color task) -Trained Control Group-. We found no cost for this second control group. This means that the cost of mental set reconfiguration between numbers (inducers) and their photisms (concurrent sensations) occurs, that there is a specific cost asymmetry (from photisms to inducers) and that this cost cannot be explained by associative learning. The results are discussed in terms of exogenous and endogenous components of mental set reconfiguration.

The semantics of 'unless' conditionals: evidence from 'unless' and disjunctive inferences.

We report the results of an experiment investigating conditional inferences from conditional assertions such as 'Juan won't go to León unless Nuria goes to Madrid' and 'Either Nuria goes to Madrid or Juan won't go to León'. This experiment addresses Dancygier's claims about the semantics of 'unless' by examining inferential endorsements of 'not-A unless B' and 'Either B or not-A' in the canonical order, presenting the categorical premise after the conditional assertions, and in the inverse order, presenting the categorical premise before the conditional assertions. The results of the experiment confirm that the representation of 'unless' includes two possibilities, although as Dancygier holds one of the possibilities may not be complete. The implications of the results are discussed in the context of the strategic nature of conditional reasoning and recent convergent theories of linguistic processing.

Cost of mental set reconfiguration between digits and their photisms in synaesthesia

In this study we present an experiment investigating the reconfiguration process elicited by the task switching paradigm in synaesthesia. We study the time course of the operations involved in the activation of photisms. In the experimental Group, four digit-color synaesthetes alternated between an odd-even task and a color task (to indicate the photism elicited by each digit). In both tasks, the target stimuli were numbers between 1 and 9 written in white. One of the control groups ran the same tasks but this time with colored numbers (Naïve Control Group). The results of these studies showed the expected pattern for the control group in the case of regular shift: a significant task switch cost with an abrupt offset and a cost reduction in long RSI. However for the experimental group, we found switch cost asymmetry in the short RSI and non-significant cost in the long RSI. A second control group performed exactly the same tasks as the experimental group (with white numbers as targets and a second imaginary color task) -Trained Control Group-. We found no cost for this second control group. This means that the cost of mental set reconfiguration between numbers (inducers) and their photisms (concurrent sensations) occurs, that there is a specific cost asymmetry (from photisms to inducers) and that this cost cannot be explained by associative learning. The results are discussed in terms of exogenous and endogenous components of mental set reconfiguration (AU)

En este estudio presentamos un experimento en el que se investiga el proceso de reconfiguración mental empleando el paradigma de cambio de tarea en sinestesia. Estudiamos el tiempo de preparación necesario en la activación de un fotismo. En el grupo experimental, cuatro sinestetas dígito-color alternaban entre una tarea de números (par-impar) y otra de color (indicar el fotismo evocado por cada dígito). En ambas tareas, el estímulo era un número entre el 1 y el 9 escrito en blanco. Uno de los grupos control realizó la misma tarea pero con los números coloreados (Naïve Control Group). Los resultados muestran el patrón de datos esperado para el grupo control en el caso de cambio de tarea predecible: un coste por cambio de tarea que desaparece en el primer ensayo de repetición usando un intervalo respuesta estímulo (RSI) largo. Sin embargo, en el grupo experimental, encontramos asimetrías en el patrón del costo usando RSI corto y un coste no significativo en el RSI largo. Un segundo grupo control realizó exactamente la misma tarea que el grupo experimental (con números en blanco y una segunda tarea de «color imaginario») -Trained Control Group-. Encontramos que no existe costo en este segundo grupo de control. Esto significa que el coste por la reconfiguración mental al alternar entre tarea de números (inductores) y su fotismo (sensación concurrente) ocurre, que hay una asimetría del costo específica (del fotismo a los inductores) y que este costo no puede ser explicado mediante el aprendizaje asociativo. Estos resultados se discuten en términos de los componentes exógenos y endógenos de la reconfiguración mental (AU)

The semantics of ‘unless’ conditionals: evidence from ‘unless’ and disjunctive inferences

We report the results of an experiment investigating conditional inferences from conditional assertions such as ‘Juan won’t go to León unless Nuria goes to Madrid’ and ‘Either Nuria goes to Madrid or Juan won’t go to León’. This experiment addresses Dancygier’s claims about the semantics of ‘unless’ by examining inferential endorsements of ‘not-A unless B’ and ‘Either B or not-A’ in the canonical order, presenting the categorical premise after the conditional assertions, and in the inverse order, presenting the categorical premise before the conditional assertions. The results of the experiment confirm that the representation of ‘unless’ includes two possibilities, although as Dancygier holds one of the possibilities may not be complete. The implications of the results are discussed in the context of the strategic nature of conditional reasoning and recent convergent theories of linguistic processing (AU)

Se presentan los resultados de un experimento en el que se investigaron las inferencias realizadas a partir de enunciados condicionales como ‘Juan no irá a León a menos que Nuria vaya Madrid’ y ‘O Nuria va a Madrid o Juan no irá a León’. En este experimento se abordan las concepciones de Dancygier sobre la semántica de ‘a menos que’ mediante el estudio de las inferencias que se extraen de ‘no-A a menos que B’ y de ‘o B o no-A’, en el orden canónico, al presentar la premisa categórica después de la afirmación condicional; y en el orden inverso, presentando la premisa categórica antes que la afirmación condicional. Los resultados confirman que la representación de ‘a menos que’ incluye dos posibilidades aunque, como Dancygier sostiene, una de las posibilidades puede no ser completa. Las implicaciones de los resultados se discuten en el contexto de la naturaleza estratégica del razonamiento condicional y de las teorías convergentes recientes sobre el procesamiento lingüístico (AU)

Encoding time and signs exposure time in the representation of diagrammatic deontic meanings.

It has been proposed that prohibition and obligation be represented in different ways in reasoning with deontic information (Bucciarelli & Johnson-Laird, 2005). Obligations are salient in permissible situations and prohibitions in impermissible situations. In some specific cases, differential initial representations are also consistently predicted from the comprehension of negations, if prohibition is considered as the negation of an obligation. Three experiments evaluate whether traffic signs of prohibition and obligation speed up the response time to the proposed direction represented and whether this advantage remains when people have more time to think. When making judgements about the manoeuvre performed by a vehicle, participants' response times are consistent with the predicted representation when they have a short time (i.e., 300ms) to understand the premise. In this case they represent what is permissible by obligatory signs and also what is impermissible by prohibitory signs. However, if they have more time (i.e., 1000 ms) to understand the premise, they still represent what is permissible by obligatory signs but they seem to change their initial representations to what is permissible by prohibitory signs.

Sequential effects in deduction: vost of inference switch

El paradigma de cambio de tarea ha ayudado a los psicólogos a conocer los procesos involucrados en el cambio de una actividad a otra. La literatura aporta resultados consistentes sobre la reconfiguración necesaria para el cambio de tarea (desaparición abrupta del coste cuando el cambio es predecible vs. reducción gradual del coste en condiciones de cambio impredecible; componentes endógeno y exógeno del coste; asimetría del coste…). En la investigación que presentamos aquí mostramos los resultados de varios experimentos en los que estudiamos el proceso de reconfiguración que se produce al alternar entre Modus Ponens y Modus Tollens. Los resultados muestran que el cambio de una inferencia a otra produce un empeoramiento en el número de errores de los participantes, así como un aumento en los tiempos de reacción (coste por interferencia del cambio). Además, encontramos una mejora gradual en el Modus Tollens en secuencias no predecibles y con intervalos respuesta-estímulo largos, en los ensayos de repetición de tarea. Ambos resultados son compatibles con la hipótesis de la reconfiguración de tarea(AU)

The task-switch paradigm has helped psychologists gain insight into the processes involved in changing from one activity to another. The literature has yielded consistent results about switch cost reconfiguration (abrupt offset in regular task-switch vs. gradual reduction in random task-switch; endogenous and exogenous components of switch cost; cost asymmetry...). In this study we present several experiments in which we investigated the reconfiguration process elicited by task switching between Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens. We found that the switch from one inference to a new one produces impairment in accuracy as an increase in reaction time (cost of inference switch). Moreover, with random sequences and a long response stimulus interval we found a gradual improvement in Modus Tollens repetitions. Both results are compatible with the task reconfiguration hypothesis(AU)