| Abstract: | Two experiments using Wason's selection task are reported in this paper. Their main purpose was to test the meaning of universal connectives ( always and never ) against the hypothetical conditional connective ( if ). In the first experiment, these two different kinds of connectives were used with the same content and in logically equivalent situations. Results demonstrated that universal connectives yield different patterns of responses than do hypothetical connectives. People seem to consider the situation described in the task in the same way, irrespective of the use of negations, when universal connectives are used, but not when the if... then structure is used. The second experiment extended these results to a different content, and to an abstract version of the task. An explanation in terms of mental models is provided. |
