Influence of world knowledge and context on the comprehension of natural language translation of logical formulas
Abstract
In this paper we present an approach to conditional reasoning tasks based on two main ideas. The first idea is
that, in contrast with what is usually assumed, an ‘if… then…’ sentence is not an adequate translation in natural
language of a logical formula containing a material implication as its principal operator. The second idea is that
when subjects are required to check the validity of a sentence in a task, their inferences are not driven uniquely
by the content of the sentence, but also by other information embedded in the task scenario and, eventually, by
their knowledge about the topic (i.e. information stored in memory). Data from 30 subjects tested on six
different tasks are reported as evidence for our approach. The results show that conditional tasks are
significantly more complex only when they are presented with ‘if… then…’ sentences and when the subject
cannot rely on any extra information, such as contextual information or knowledge about the topic.