Predicting propositional logic inferences in text comprehension

Predictive inferences are represented as hypothetical facts

“…Thus, despite their limited competence for logical reasoning (George, 1995;Rader & Sloutsky, 2002), readers appear able to use a deductive schema or a mental model that ensure the necessary truth of the deductions they make while reading (De Neys et al, 2002;George, 1997;Lea et al, 1990;Noveck, 2001). This conclusion does not contradict that, as reported by Rader and Sloutsky (2002), logical errors would have occurred if the texts had invited the participant to draw invalid deductions, such as inferring the antecedent from the consequence of a Modus Ponens (i.e., inferring that a proposition p is true when the text states that the proposition q and the rule ''if p then q'' are true).…”

“…Lea, OÕBrien, Fisch, Braine, and Noveck (1990) reported high recognition frequencies (about 70%) for deductive inferences that followed from a text, the participants having been instructed to treat paraphrases and text statements as being equivalent. This result is similar to what has been found in reasoning tasks.…”

4. Inference and reasoning in discourse comprehension

“…After reading passages like "Dressing Up," the subjects judged whether the information expressed by test sentences had been stated explicitly or implicitly in its passage. Overwhelmingly, and more often compared to a control, subjects falsely identified, as explicit, information that they had inferred (Lea et al 1990, Experiments 1 and 2). For example, readers indicated that the "Dressing Up" passage explicitly stated that Jerry had decided to wear his striped shirt, when in fact that outcome must be deduced via the or-elimination inference (striped or checkered shirt; not checkered; therefore striped).…”

Some utterances are underinformative: The onset and time course of scalar inferences

“…These studies can be broken down into two sets. One investigates the way logical inferences are made on-line in the context of story comprehension (e.g., Lea, 1995;Lea, O'Brien, Fisch, & Noveck, 1990). In this approach, the comprehension of a term like or is considered to be tantamount to knowing logical inference schemas attached to it.…”