We report two studies investigating how naïve reasoners evaluate the probability that a conditional assertion is true, and the conditional probability that the consequent of the conditional is true given that the antecedent is true. The mental model theory predicts that individuals should evaluate the probability of a conditional on the basis of the mental models representing the conditional, a...

There are many ways in which language can describe the dependency of one occurrence on another and hence many varieties of conditional construction, including conditionals in ‘if’, ‘when’, ‘since’, and ‘as’, the absolutive conditionals of Stump (1985), and the correlative conditional construction (‘the more, the merrier’) discussed in Fillmore (1986). This paper will be concerned with investiga...