This paper advocates a basic distinction between two epistemic operations called focusing and revision, which can be defined in any, symbolic or numerical, representation framework which is rich enough for acknowledging the difference between factual evidence and generic knowledge. Revision amounts to modifying the generic knowledge when receiving new pieces of generic knowledge (or the factual...

Current evidence provides support for the idea that time is mentally represented by spatial means, as a lateral mental time line. However, available studies have tested only factual events, i.e., those which have occurred in the past or will occur in the future. In the present study we tested whether past and future potential events are also represented along the lateral mental timeline. In Exp...

This study investigates whether gender differences in adolescents’ advertising judgments and purchase intentions are due to their level of involvement with the advertised product, and with the claim made in the ad, i.e. whether evaluative versus factual message claims are used. Male (n = 115) and female adolescents (n = 127) were randomly assigned to a mixed design. They read either factual or ...

What are the truth conditions of want ascriptions? According to an influential approach, they intimately connected agent’s beliefs: ?S wants p? is true iff, within S’s belief set, S prefers p worlds not-p worlds. This approach faces a well-known problem, however: it makes wrong predictions for what we call (counter)factual ascriptions, wherein agent either believes or not-p—for example, ‘I rain...

We examine expertise as an assemblage of factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, and the ability to transfer. Experiment 1 provides empirical support in biomechanics, a contentdominated domain; Experiment 2 extends the construct to bioengineering design, a processdominated domain. Factual knowledge is a lesser predictor than conceptual knowledge, which is a lesser predictor than transfer in de...