Papers by Sergio Moreno-ríos
Pensamiento y razonamiento
Memory & Cognition, 2021
Our goal was to study how people understand the negation of counterfactuals (such as “Antonio den... more Our goal was to study how people understand the negation of counterfactuals (such as “Antonio denied/said that it is false that if Messi had played, then Barcelona would have won”) and semifactuals (such as “Antonio denied that even if Messi had played, Barcelona would have won”). Previous studies have shown that participants negated basic conditionals using small-scope interpretations by endorsing a new conditional with the negated consequent, but also by making large-scope interpretations, endorsing a conjunction with the negated consequent. Three experiments showed that when participants were asked whether the negation of a counterfactual (Experiments 1 and 2) or semifactual (Experiment 3) conditional was followed by a new conditional, they made a small-scope interpretation, endorsing the same conditional with the negated consequent (e.g., “if/even if Messi had played, Barcelona would not have won”). However, they also accepted the conditional with the negated antecedent for semi...
Psicología del desarrollo cognitivo y adquisición del lenguaje
Unless Reasoning
The Spanish Journal of Psychology
We report the results of two experiments investigating conditional inferences from conditional un... more We report the results of two experiments investigating conditional inferences from conditional unless assertions, such as Juan is not in León unless Nuria is in Madrid. Experiments 1 and 2 check Fillenbaum's hypothesis about the semantic similarity of unless with if not and only if assertions; both also examine inferential endorsements (Experiment 1) and endorsements and latencies (Experiment 2) of the four logically equivalent conditional formulations: if A then B, if not-B then not-A, A only if B and not-A unless B. The results of these experiments show the similarity of unless and only if, confirming that the representation of both conditionals from the outset probably include two possibilities directionally oriented from B to A; results also confirm the especial difficulty of unless assertions. The implications of the results are discussed in the context of recent psychological and linguistic theories of the meaning of unless.
Current Psychology
Reasoning with counterfactuals such as “if his sister had entered silently, the child would have ... more Reasoning with counterfactuals such as “if his sister had entered silently, the child would have been awake”, requires considering what is conjectured (“his sister entered silently”) and what is the counterfactual possibility (“his sister did not enter silently”). In two experiments, we test how both adults (Study 1) and children from 8 to 12 years (Study 2) construct counterfactual possibilities about the cause of an effect (“the child was awake because…”). We test specifically whether people construct the counterfactual possibility by recovering alternatives, for example, “the alarm clock sounded” or by using the syntactic negation using propositional symbols (“his sister did not enter silently”). Moreover, as children show difficulty in thinking with abstract contents, we test whether they construct the counterfactual possibility more readily by recovering concrete alternatives (“the alarm clock sounded”) rather than abstract alternatives (“he had trouble sleeping”). Results show...
How children and adults keep track of real information when thinking counterfactually
PLOS ONE
Thinking about counterfactual conditionals such as “if she had not painted the sheet of paper, it... more Thinking about counterfactual conditionals such as “if she had not painted the sheet of paper, it would have been blank” requires us to consider what is conjectured (She did not paint and the sheet was blank) and what actually happened (She painted and the sheet was not blank). In two experiments with adults (Study 1) and schoolchildren from 7 to 13 years (Study 2), we tested three potential sources of difficulty with counterfactuals: inferring, distinguishing what is real vs conjectured (epistemic status) and comprehending linguistic conditional expressions (“if” vs “even if”). The results showed that neither adults nor schoolchildren had difficulty in the comprehension of counterfactual expressions such as “even if” with respect to “if then”. The ability to infer with both of these develops during school years, with adults showing great ability. However, the third source factor is critical: we found that the key to young children’s difficulty with counterfactual thinking was their...
Content of relationship, number of alternatives and working memory capacity in conditional inferences
Current Psychology
Testing the visual impedance effect in children with and without reading difficulties using a new visual reasoning task
Dyslexia
Inferences from disclosures about the truth and falsity of expert testimony
Thinking & Reasoning
Children’s Illusory Transparency of Intention: Construal versus Pragmatic View
Discourse Processes
Thinking about social and nonsocial alternative possibilities in premature preschoolers
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 2016
Prematurely born preschoolers show developmental cognitive delay compared to full-term children. ... more Prematurely born preschoolers show developmental cognitive delay compared to full-term children. There are important neurological networks developing at preschool age related to perspective taking about the attribution of belief and to deduction with contrary-to-fact situations. Other deductive abilities may be completed during that period. A group of very prematurely born children (N = 35) aged between 4 and 5 years was compared with a control group of children born at full term (N = 35). They completed different cognitive tasks that required making inferences about possible true facts and false facts, and about others' beliefs. Results showed that preterm children had more difficulties with false beliefs and counterfactual tasks than the controls but they did not differ in equivalent deductive tasks. We discuss the possible difficulties of preterm children when they first reach primary school age, not only with social perspective taking, but also with considering nonsocial contrary-to-fact alternatives. Prematurity is not a syndrome, but could be a risk condition. Therefore, these results are relevant in the field of differential diagnosis-in particular, for children with difficulties in perspective taking, a condition with which children born prematurely could share some characteristics.
Concessive and semifactual interpretations during reasoning with multiple conditionals
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2016
The present research evaluates how people integrate factual ‘if then’ and semifactual ‘even if’ c... more The present research evaluates how people integrate factual ‘if then’ and semifactual ‘even if’ conditional premises in an inference task. The theory of mental models establishes that semifactual statements are represented by two mental models with different epistemic status: ‘A & B’ is conjectured and ‘not-A & B’ is presupposed. However, following the principle of cognitive economy in tasks with a high working memory load such as reasoning with multiple conditionals, people could simplify the deduction process in two ways, by discarding: (a) the presupposed case and/or (b) the epistemic status information. In Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, we evaluated each of these hypotheses. In Experiment 1, participants make inferences from two conditionals: two factual conditionals or one factual and one semifactual, with different representations. In Experiment 2, participants make inferences with a factual conditional followed by two different semifactual conditionals that share the same rep...
Intel·ligències múltiples i rendiment en el futbol
Apunts Educació Física i Esports, 2015
Mental Representation of Traffic Signs
Traffic and Transport Psychology, 2005
Inherent directionality of “even if” counterfactual conditionals
Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 2016
Journal of Pragmatics, 2011
Conceptos fundamentales de Psicología
Información del libro Conceptos fundamentales de Psicología.
I Jornadas De Psicologia Del Pensamiento Santiago De Compostela 22 23 De Junio 1998 1998 Isbn 84 8121 706 9 Pags 39 56, 1998
En su reciente libro Rips (1994) presenta los datos de un estudio en el que utilizó los siguiente... more En su reciente libro Rips (1994) presenta los datos de un estudio en el que utilizó los siguientes problemas:
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Papers by Sergio Moreno-ríos