Evans Jonathan St B T, Handley Simon J, Hadjchristidis Constantinos, Thompson Valerie, Over David E, Bennett Stephanie
Centre for Thinking and Language, School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2007 May;60(5):635-43. doi: 10.1080/17470210601100274.
According to the suppositional theory of conditionals, people assess their belief in a conditional statement of the form "if p then q" by conducting a mental simulation on the supposition of p in which they assess their degree of belief in q. This leads to them to the judge the probability of a conditional statement to be equal to the conditional probability, P(q|p). Evidence for this conditional probability hypothesis has been adduced in earlier studies for abstract, causal, and counterfactual conditionals. For the realistic conditionals, it is natural to assume that people perform such mental simulations by building causal mental models from prior causes to later effects. However, in the present study we show that the conditional probability hypothesis extends to diagnostic conditionals, which relate effects to causes. This new finding presents a major challenge for theoretical accounts of the mental processing of conditional statements.
根据条件句的假设理论，人们通过对假设p进行心理模拟来评估他们对“如果p那么q”这种形式条件句的信念，在该模拟中他们评估自己对q的信念程度。这使得他们判断条件句的概率等于条件概率P(q|p)。早期针对抽象、因果和反事实条件句的研究已经为这一条件概率假设提供了证据。对于现实条件句，自然可以假设人们通过构建从先前原因到后续结果的因果心理模型来进行这种心理模拟。然而，在本研究中我们表明，条件概率假设也适用于将结果与原因联系起来的诊断条件句。这一新发现对条件句心理加工的理论解释提出了重大挑战。
