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A review is presented of the book “Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment,” edited by Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman.

Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment

語用論(Pragmatics)を考える

Much research in the last two decades has demon- strated that human responses deviate from the performance deemed normative according to various models of decision mak- ing and rational judgment (e.g., the basic axioms of utility theory). This gap between the normative and the descriptive can be inter- preted as indicating systematic irrationalities in human cognition. However, four alternative interpretations preserve the assumption that human behavior and cognition is largely rational. These posit that the gap is due to (1) performance errors, (2) computational limitations, (3) the wrong norm being applied by the experi- menter, and (4) a different construal of the task by the subject. In the debates about the viability of these alternative explanations, attention has been focused too narrowly on the modal response. In a series of experiments involving most of the classic tasks in the heuristics and biases literature, we have examined the implica- tions of individual differences in performance for each of the four explanations of the normative/descriptive gap. Performance er- rors are a minor factor in the gap; computational limitations un- derlie non-normative responding on several tasks, particularly those that involve some type of cognitive decontextualization. Un- expected patterns of covariance can suggest when the wrong norm is being applied to a task or when an alternative construal of the task should be considered appropriate.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0140525X00003435

Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate?

The program of research now known as the heuristics and biases approach began with a survey of 84 participants at the 1969 meetings of the Mathematical Psychology Society and the American Psychological Association (Tversky & Kahneman, 1971). The respondents, including several authors of statistics texts, were asked realistic questions about the robustness of statistical estimates and the replicability of research results. The article commented tongue-in-heek on the prevalence of a belief that the law of large numbers applies to small numbers as well: Respondents placed too much confidence in the results of small samples, and their statistical judgments showed little sensitivity to sample size. The mathematical psychologists who participated in the survey not only should have known better – they did know better. Although their intuitive guesses were off the mark, most of them could have computed the correct answers on the back of an envelope. These sophisticated individuals apparently had access to two distinct approaches for answering statistical questions: one that is spontaneous, intuitive, effortless, and fast; and another that is deliberate, rule-governed, effortful, and slow. The persistence of large biases in the guesses of experts raised doubts about the educability of statistical intuitions. Moreover, it was known that the same biases affect choices in the real world, where researchers commonly select sample sizes that are too small to provide a fair test of their hypotheses (Cohen, 1969, 1992).

Representativeness revisited: Attribute substitution in intuitive judgment.

It is generally assumed that bare numerals (e.g., three) have two readings: the exactly and the at least reading. It has been a matter of debate whether one of these two readings is derived from the other pragmatically. To shed light on this question research has aimed at characterizing the processing demands associated with these alternative interpretations. Here we use a sentence-picture verification paradigm where participants are asked to judge whether "N pictures contain Xs" is true in a situation where (a) exactly N, (b) fewer than N, or (c) more than N pictures contain Xs. The critical case is the last one, where accepting responses indicate the at least interpretation of the numeral, whereas rejecting responses indicate the exactly interpretation. We show that the responses linked to the exactly and at least readings lead to quantitatively different event-related brain potentials (ERPs), which presumably reflect different cognitive processes. For the exactly responders, the ERPs elicited by content nouns downstream from the quantifier phrase formed a negativity effect in the condition with more than N Xs, relative to the condition with exactly N Xs. However, no such effect was evident for the responders who applied the at least interpretation. We argue that the lack of any ERP effect for the at least responders is not compatible with any theory presupposing an exactly semantics of numerals. The observed N400 effect is furthermore shown to be modulated by the type of alternatives presented in the context scenario. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

When numbers are not exact: Ambiguity and prediction in the processing of sentences with bare numerals.

This squib reconsiders Geis & Zwicky’s influential proposal on Invited Inference, according to which conditionals are regularly “perfected” to biconditionals. We first show that the “regularity” assumption attached to conditional perfection is doubtful in light of established experimental findings concerning other logical terms, such as Some and or and the conjunction and. We then review existing conditional data with the aim of making them cohere with these other experimental findings. We argue that (a) the process that leaves the impression of a biconditional reading (the acceptance of a fallacious argument such as the Affirmation of the Consequent) arises only after all participants detect a violation on-line from what is essentially a surprising minor premise and that; (b) some participants make an effort to adjust to such unexpected violations at a relatively small cognitive cost in order to accept invalid arguments while others persist in rejecting whatever follows and at a greater cognitive cost. Both of these features of conditional processing undermine claims from Geis & Zwicky’s proposal.

Squib: A deflationary account of invited inferences

An utterance conjoining two propositions with and often conveys more information than the sum of its parts. Consider how a truth-table analysis would show that Mary got pregnant and got married is equivalent to Mary got pregnant and got married; in conversation, the order of the two conjuncts matters much more. We present three experiments that investigate both the development and on-line processing of pragmatic enrichments linked to and by presenting story-vignettes, each concerning a short series of events, to ten-year-olds and adults. Critical were two types of a comprehension question: One that conjoined two events in their order of appearance and one that inverted the two events. Results show that (a) children are generally more likely than adults to respond affirmatively to invertedorder questions; b) as events are made more salient in the story, children's pragmatic enrichments in response to the test-questions increase and; (c) inverted-order questions are linked with extra reading time for both children and adults, but not necessarily for the same reason. These data are taken to show that and sentences are initially processed among children in a minimal fashion and that developmental effects reflect how pragmatic enrichments as well as metalinguistic analyses require further effort in processing these sentences.

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00652447/document

Children's enrichments of conjunctive sentences in context

Older interlocutors are more likely than younger ones to make pragmatic inferences, that is, inferences that go beyond the linguistically encoded meaning of a sentence. Here we ask whether pragmatic development is associated with increased activity in brain structures associated with inference-making or in those associated with Theory of Mind. We employed a reading task that presents vignettes in one of two versions, one of which is expected to prompt more pragmatic processing. Both versions present a major premise containing three possibilities (e.g., Xavier is considering Thursday, Friday or Saturday for inviting his girlfriend out). In the Fully-Deductive (control) condition, the major premise is followed by two disjunction-elimination premises through two separate lines (one indicating that Saturday is not convenient and another saying that Thursday is not convenient); this is followed by a valid conclusion (e.g., "I'll reserve Friday"). In the Implicated-Premise condition, the first disjunction-elimination premise is followed by a second similar one that eliminates the same disjunction (e.g., both lines explain why Saturday is not convenient). In this condition, readers may pragmatically enrich the conclusion (i.e., "I'll reserve Friday" pragmatically implicates that Xavier is also eliminating Thursday from consideration). Reading times in Experiment 1 showed that processing the speaker's conclusion in the Implicated-Premise condition becomes increasingly more effort-demanding as readers reach adolescence. Experiment 2 showed that this developmental pattern is related to age-related increases in fMRI activity in fronto-parietal regions typically involved in inference-making processes. We found no evidence indicating age effects related to Theory of Mind areas.

/pdf/the-neural-development-of-pragmatic-inference-making-in-429b61lar0.pdf

Ira A. Noveck

Papers

When numbers are not exact: Ambiguity and prediction in the processing of sentences with bare numerals.

Squib: A deflationary account of invited inferences

Children's enrichments of conjunctive sentences in context

The neural development of pragmatic inference-making in natural discourse.

To what extent do social contracts affect performance on Wason's selection task