The theory of mental models postulates that conditionals and disjunctions refer to possibilities, real or counterfactual. Factual conditionals, for example, "If there's an apple, there's a pear," parallel counterfactual ones, for example, "If there had been an apple, there would have been a pear." A similar parallel underlies…

Individuals draw conclusions about possibilities from assertions that make no explicit reference to them. The model theory postulates that assertions such as disjunctions refer to possibilities. Hence, a disjunction of the sort, "A or B or both," where "A" and "B" are sensible clauses, yields mental models of an…

We report 3 experiments investigating novel sorts of inference, such as: A or B or both. Therefore, possibly (A and B). Where the contents were sensible assertions, for example, "Space tourism will achieve widespread popularity in the next 50 years or advances in material science will lead to the development of antigravity materials in the…

The mental model theory postulates that the meanings of assertions, and knowledge about their context can "modulate" the logical meaning of sentential connectives, such as "if" and "or". One known effect of modulation is to block the representation of possibilities to which a proposition refers. But, modulation should also add relational…

Syllogisms are arguments about the properties of entities. They consist of 2 premises and a conclusion, which can each be in 1 of 4 "moods": "All A are B," "Some A are B," "No A are B," and "Some A are not B." Their logical analysis began with Aristotle, and their psychological investigation began over 100 years ago. This article outlines the…

Given that A is longer than B, and that B is longer than C, even 5-year-old children can infer that A is longer than C. Theories of reasoning based on formal rules of inference invoke simple axioms ("meaning postulates") to capture such transitive inferences. An alternative theory proposes instead that reasoners construct mental models of the…

Deontic assertions concern what one ought to do, may do, and ought not to do. This paper proposes a theory of their meanings and of how these meanings are represented in mental models. The meanings of deontic assertions refer to sets of permissible and impermissible states. An experiment corroborated the ability of individuals to list these…

A hyper-emotion theory of psychological illnesses is presented. It postulates that these illnesses have an onset in which a cognitive evaluation initiates a sequence of unconscious transitions yielding a basic emotion. This emotion is appropriate for the situation but inappropriate in its intensity. Whenever it recurs, it leads individuals to a…

Inferences about spatial, temporal, and other relations are ubiquitous. This article presents a novel model-based theory of such reasoning. The theory depends on 5 principles. (a) The structure of mental models is iconic as far as possible. (b) The logical consequences of relations emerge from models constructed from the meanings of the relations…

A theory of deductive reasoning is presented for inferences that depend on multiply quantified premises. It is argued that reasoners construct mental models based on their knowledge of the meaning of the quantifiers. Three experiments, with 54 university students and adults, corroborated the theory. (SLD)