Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2011 Feb;23(2):471-80. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2009.21360. Epub 2009 Nov 19.
Defeasible inferences are inferences that can be revised in the light of new information. Although defeasible inferences are pervasive in everyday communication, little is known about how and when they are processed by the brain. This study examined the electrophysiological signature of defeasible reasoning using a modified version of the suppression task. Participants were presented with conditional inferences (of the type "if p, then q; p, therefore q") that were preceded by a congruent or a disabling context. The disabling context contained a possible exception or precondition that prevented people from drawing the conclusion. Acceptability of the conclusion was indeed lower in the disabling condition compared to the congruent condition. Further, we found a large sustained negativity at the conclusion of the disabling condition relative to the congruent condition, which started around 250 msec and was persistent throughout the entire epoch. Possible accounts for the observed effect are discussed.
可废止推理是指可以根据新信息进行修正的推理。尽管可废止推理在日常交流中普遍存在，但人们对大脑如何以及何时处理它们知之甚少。本研究使用修改后的抑制任务来检查可废止推理的电生理特征。参与者被呈现条件推理（例如“如果 p，则 q；p，因此 q”），这些推理之前是一致的或禁用的上下文。禁用的上下文包含一个可能的例外或前提条件，阻止人们得出结论。与一致条件相比，禁用条件下的结论确实更不可接受。此外，我们在禁用条件下相对于一致条件的结论处发现了一个大的持续负性，该负性大约在 250 毫秒处开始，并在整个时期内持续存在。对观察到的效应的可能解释进行了讨论。
