Whether The Conditional Sentence Is Decisive Or Probabilistic

Conditionals (if p then q) are extensively used in everyday context and scientific research. In psychology, theories of conditionals had different opinions on the meaning of basic conditionals. Mental model, formal rules treat the conditional as having a deterministic meaning. It means that a conditional expresses a deterministic relation between antecedent and consequent and tolerates no exceptions. Probabilistic theory treats the conditional as having probabilistic meaning. It means that a conditional expresses a probabilistic relation between antecedent and consequent and tolerates few exceptions. Three experiments, which concerned basic conditionals, examined whether individuals treat the meaning of basic conditional assertions as deterministic or probabilistic from the perspective of experimental task.Experiment 1 explored the effect of the type of task (conditional implication reasoning task and conditional truth reasoning task) and the nature of judgments (general judgments and specific judgments) on the meaning of conditionals. Results showed that the type of task had no effect on the meaning of conditionals, while the nature of judgment affected it. Participants tended to take a deterministic interpretation on conditional in general judgments and take a probabilistic interpretation in specific judgments in both two type of task. The percentage of deterministic response in general judgments was significantly higher than that in specific judgments. On base of these results, we speculated that the difference of conditional meaning in two judgments caused by the different processing.Experiment 2 and 3 explored whether the effect on processing in judgments would caused the change of conditional meaning respectively in truth reasoning task and implication reasoning task. The within-subject factor was the nature of judgments which varied into two levels:general judgments and specific judgments. The between-subjects factor was the order of presentation of two judgments which varied into two conditions:general judgments before specific judgments (general/specific) and specific judgments before general judgments (specific/general). For general judgments,the general/specific condition was the control condition and the specific/general condition was the experimental one. For specific judgments, the specific/general condition was the control condition and the general/specific condition was the experimental one. Results showed that:comparing to the control condition, the percentage of deterministic response in the general judgment reduced; comparing to the control condition, the percentage of deterministic response in the specific judgment increased. The specific judgments promoted the probabilistic response and inhabited the deterministic response in latter general judgments, which could be called inductive effect. The general judgments promoted the deterministic response and inhabited the probabilistic response in latter specific judgment, which could be called conceptual priming effect. Thees effects appeared in both truth reasoning and implication reasoning tasks.Results of the present study showed that the deterministic meaning and the probabilistic meaning is not absolutely opposite. There were different meaning of conditionals in different judgments. Even though, the meaning of conditionals in same judgment would changed. Therefore, the meaning of conditionals could be either deterministic or probabilistic, which depended on the condition of task.