TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2007//
TI  - On the Basis of Belief in Causal and Diagnostic Conditionals
JO  - Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006)
A1  - Evans, Jonathan St. B. T.
A1  - Handley, Simon J.
A1  - Hadjchristidis, Constantinos
A1  - Thompson, Valerie
A1  - Over, David E.
A1  - Bennett, Stephanie
SP  - 635
EP  - 643
VL  - 60
IS  - 5
N2  - 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.     <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 1747-0218
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470210601100274
ID  - ref1
ER  -