Two studies explored the conditions under which readers update their representation of news reports in the presence of alternative plausible explanations for a target event. To do so, this study asked readers to read news reports that mentioned 2 different causes to explain the occurrence of a single event. This study manipulated which of the 2…

When Tarzan asks Jane "Do you like my friends?" and Jane answers "Some of them," her underinformative reply implicates "Not all of them." This "scalar inference" arises when a less-than-maximally informative utterance implies the denial of a more informative proposition. Default Inference accounts (e.g.,…

Literature on relational reasoning mainly focuses on the performance question. It is typically argued that problem difficulty relies on the number of ''mental models'' compatible with the problem. However, no study has ever investigated the wording of conclusions that participants formulate. In the present work, we analyze the relational terms…