Logical connectives, such as "AND", "OR", "IF . . . THEN", and "IF AND ONLY IF" are ubiquitous in both language and cognition; however, reasoning with logical connectives is error-prone. We argue that some of these errors may stem from people's tendency to minimize the number of possibilities compatible with logical connectives and to construct a "minimalist" one-possibility representation. As a result, connectives denoting a single possibility (e.g., conjunctions) are likely to be represented correctly, whereas connectives denoting multiple possibilities (e.g., disjunctions or conditionals) are likely to be erroneously represented as conjunctions. These predictions were tested and confirmed in three experiments using different paradigms. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with a multiple-choice task and asked to select all and only those possibilities that would indicate that compound verbal propositions were true versus false. In Experiment 2, a somewhat similar task was used, except that participants were asked later to perform a cued recall of verbal propositions. Finally, Experiment 3 used an oldew recognition paradigm to examine participants' ability to accurately recognize different logical connectives. The results of the three experiments are discussed in relation to theories of representation of possibilities and theories of reasoning.
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机译：逻辑连接词，例如“ AND”，“ OR”，“ IF ... THEN”和“ IF AND ONLY IF”在语言和认知上都很普遍;但是，逻辑连接词的推理容易出错。我们认为，其中一些错误可能源于人们趋向于将与逻辑连接词兼容的可能性最小化，并构建“极简主义”的单可能性表示。结果，表示单个可能性的连接词（例如，连词）很可能被正确地表示，而表示多个可能性的连接词（例如，析取或条件）很可能被错误地表示为连接词。这些预测在三个使用不同范式的实验中得到测试和证实。在实验1中，向参与者展示了多项选择任务，并要求他们选择所有并且仅选择那些可能表明复合言语命题是对还是错的可能性。在实验2中，使用了一些类似的任务，只是后来要求参与者对口头命题进行提示性回忆。最后，实验3使用新旧识别范式来检查参与者准确识别不同逻辑连接词的能力。结合可能性表示理论和推理理论讨论了这三个实验的结果。
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