Chronometrical evidence supports the model theory of negation (original) (raw)
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Mental Models for the Negation of Conjunctions and Disjunctions
Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 2014
This study investigates why reasoning that involves negation is extremely difficult. We presented participants with reasoning problems containing sentences with negation of conjunctions and disjunctions in order to test predictions derived from the Mental Models Theory of human thought. According to this theory, reasoning consists of representing and comparing possibilities. Different sentential forms would require different cognitive demands. In particular, responses to a sentential negation task would be modulated by working memory load. This prediction would hold for correct responses but also for the general pattern of responses that includes incorrect responses when the task offers different response options. A within-subjects experimental design with selection paradigm was applied to test these predictions. Experimental comparisons and a complementary descriptive study yielded evidence consistent with the theory-driven predictions derived from the Mental Models Theory. The working memory load was critical for the modulation of correct responses and overall responses. We discussed alternative accounts, and suggested additional predictions for further evaluation of these phenomena.
The cognitive dynamics of negated sentence verification
Cognitive Science, 2011
We explored the influence of negation on cognitive dynamics, measured using mouse-movement trajectories, to test the classic notion that negation acts as an operator on linguistic processing. In three experiments, participants verified the truth or falsity of simple statements, and we tracked the computer-mouse trajectories of their responses. Sentences expressing these facts sometimes contained a negation. Such negated statements could be true (e.g., ''elephants are not small'') or false (e.g., ''elephants are not large''). In the first experiment, as predicted by the classic notion of negation, we found that negation caused more discreteness in the mouse trajectory of a response. The second experiment induced a simple context for these statements, yet negation still increased discreteness in trajectories. A third experiment enhanced the pragmatic context of sentences, and the discreteness was substantially diminished, with one primary measure no longer significantly showing increased discreteness at all. Traditional linguistic theories predict rapid shifts in cognitive dynamics occur due to the nature of negation: It is an operator that reverses the truth or falsity of an interpretation. We argue that these results support both propositional and contextual accounts of negation present in the literature, suggesting that contextual factors are crucial for determining the kind of cognitive dynamics displayed. We conclude by drawing broader lessons about theories of cognition from the case of negation.
We present a meta-analytic review on the processing of negations in conditional reasoning about affirmation problems (Modus Ponens: “MP”, Affirmation of the Consequent “AC”) and denial problems (Denial of the Antecedent “DA”, and Modus Tollens “MT”). Findings correct previous generalisations about the phenomena. First, the effects of negation in the part of the conditional about which an inference is made, are not constrained to denial problems. These inferential-negation effects are also observed on AC. Second, there generally are reliable effects of a negation in the clause referred to by the categorical premise, and these referred-negation effects are constrained to the logically fallacious AC and DA inferences. All findings are presented and discussed in relation to contemporary mental model (MM) and mental logic (ML) theories. It is argued that a double-negation elimination hypothesis provides a sufficient explanation of inferential-negation effects within both MM theory and ML theory, if the latter is extended by a validating search for counter examples. Both MM and ML theories adhere to a processing scheme that allows them to incorporate an account of referred-negation effects based on the thesis that counter-example frequency is modulated by the scope of a contrast class delineated by a false affirmative. We conclude that MM and ML theories provide adequate processing schemes to accommodate for the explanatory hypotheses, at least in principle. In practice, both approaches remain equivocal as regards the connectivity and interactivity with long-term memory knowledge invoked in generating, manipulating, and testing the mental representations of negative state of affairs.
Prior Affirmative Representation Facilitates the Cognitive Processing of Compound Negation
A mixed factorial design of 2x2x2 was applied (sequence x law x affirmation) to evaluate the effects of prior affirmative representation on the subsequent processing of compound negation. The sequence factor was defined to perform between-subjects comparisons. The other two factors, that is, logic law and prior affirmation were defined as within-subjects factors. The sequence factor was included to evaluate potential artifacts generated by the experimental design. Statistical analyses showed the absence of such artifacts. Three dependent variables were included: response type, an indirect measure of introspection quality, and a direct measure of subjective difficulty. A random sample of 130 participants were recruited for this experiment. All the participants were undergraduate students at the National University of Entre Rios, Argentina. 112 were female (86.2%). The mean age was 23.79 years old (SD = 6.452). 2 sets of 6 exercises each were given to all the participants. The classical selection paradigm was applied, that is, four response options were given in each item. Only one of them was the normative response according to logic (DeMorgan's equivalences for negated conjunctions and negated disjunctions). One set included prior relevant affirmation before requiring negation, the other set started straightforward with the negation task. The task was to find the logical meaning of such compound negation that operated on a conjunction or a disjunction. By the other side, the set of exercises without prior affirmation asked straightforward to find the equivalence for a given compound negation of a conjunction or a disjunction. After completing each set of 6 responses participants were asked to give an opinion about their own performance (introspection quality) and about the task difficulty (subjective difficulty). In consistence with the mental models theory and the relevance theory, prior affirmation increased the frequency of normative responses and the quality of introspection. However, a direct registry of task difficulty showed no difference between a prior affirmation condition and a straightforward condition in consistence with the Gricean view of negation. An unexpected result showed an incremental effect of normative responses for the negation of conjunctions in comparison with the negation of disjunctions when prior affirmation provided a pragmatically enriched context. These results are discussed in terms of working memory dynamics. In sum, our findings suggest that the processing of compound negation of conjunctions and disjunctions can be explained as a combination of explicit and implicit processes that are strongly influenced by pragmatic factors.
The Shallow Processing of Logical Negation
Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, 2013
The aim of this study is to introduce a novel reasoning phenomenon concerned with the shallow processing of negation in the context of sentential reasoning. By analogy to other psychological explanations that account for superficial responses with conditionals, this study proposes an account for biconditionals derived from a recent theory of negation. This theory predicts that the psychological use of negation returns small scope products. This would happen because the human mind tends to avoid the working memory overload by simplifying its reasoning processes. A within-subjects experimental design was applied to test this conjecture. Results were consistent with such small scope negation prediction. The obtained evidence extends the observation of shallow reasoning processes to the negation of conjunctions and disjunctions that take the form of biconditionals. The results of this study support a mental models approach to account for the psychology of logical negation.
To predict or not to predict: The role of context constraint and truth-value in negation processing
Studies on negation processing often report a Polarity by Truth interaction: False affirmative sentences show longer response times and larger N400 ERPs relative to true affirmative sentences, whereas the effect of truth-value is reversed for negative sentences. This interaction has repeatedly been linked to variations in lexical associations, predictability, or to the need of constructing two subsequent mental representations during the comprehension of negative sentences. To disentangle the context-independent effect of negation as a syntactic operator from the context-dependent effect of predictability we ran five ERP-experiments employing a picture-sentence verification paradigm. The word's predictability was manipulated by varying the number of alternative sentence continuations provided by the context and making it equivalent for both sentence polarities. We show that predictability modulated the online processing of affirmative and negative sentences in a similar manner. ...
Context effects on the spontaneous production of negation
Intercultural Pragmatics, 2008
There has been a substantial amount of research that has examined how context a¤ects people's understanding of negation. Many authors argue that negation is more plausible or natural in some contexts than in others. For these authors, it is reasonable to negate a proposition only when it is presupposed. However, this assumption has been indirectly inferred from comprehension studies. None of them checked if the frequency of the spontaneous use of negation depends on the context. In this paper we present two experiments on this topic. The participants read stories where a sentence is false; and were asked to produce a sentence that could be true. In the first experiment they produced more negations from multiple than from bipolar contexts (e.g., when the false sentence was ''the car was red'' as compared to ''the car was big''). In the second experiment the context was logically dichotomized by adding disjunctions. In this case, incongruent contexts enhanced the use of negation. The results seem to support the idea that when there is a clear alternative, negation is seldom spontaneously produced even if it denies a presupposition.
The Processing of Negation and Polarity: An Overview
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
Negation is a universal component of human language; polarity sensitivity (i.e., lexical distributional constraints in relation to negation) is arguably so while being pervasive across languages. Negation has long been a field of inquiry in psychological theories and experiments of reasoning, which inspired many follow-up studies of negation and negation-related phenomena in psycholinguistics. In generative theoretical linguistics, negation and polarity sensitivity have been extensively studied, as the related phenomena are situated at the interfaces of syntax, semantics and pragmatics, and are thus extremely revealing about the architecture of grammar. With the now long tradition of research on negation and polarity in psychology and psycholinguistics, and the emerging field of experimental semantics and pragmatics, a multitude of interests and experimental paradigms have emerged which call for re-evaluations and further development and integration. This special issue contains a co...
Negation: A theory of its meaning, representation, and use
2012
This article presents a model-based theory of what negation means, how it is mentally represented, and how it is understood. The theory postulates that negation takes a single argument that refers to a set of possibilities and returns the complement of that set. Individuals therefore tend to assign a small scope to negation in order to minimize the number of models of possibilities that they have to consider. Individuals untrained in logic do not know the possibilities corresponding to the negation of compound assertions formed with if, or, and and, and have to infer the possibilities one by one. It follows that negations are easier to understand, and to formulate, when individuals already have in mind the possibilities to be negated. The paper shows that the evidence, including the results of recent studies, corroborates the theory.