Reasoning from promises presented in different orders. Empirical verification of the mental model theory
Abstract
The aim of conducting research was to investigate how naive reasoners draw inferences from three premises presented one at a time on a computer screen. According to the mental model theory of reasoning those orders of the premises that call for construction of multiple models should be harder that orders calling for a single model that is only updated with the information from subsequent premises. This prediction was corroborated by means of both accuracy and reaction times in the experiment in which participants were free to draw their own conclusions. It also turned out that drawing conclusions from disjunction inferences with a positive categorical was more difficult that drawing conclusions from inferences with a positive categorical. Also inferences containing two disjunctions proved to be harder than disjunction and conditional inferences.
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