Reasoning about the Relations between Relations

Abstract

Relations can hold between relations, as in assertions such as: Cordelia loves Lear more than Goneril does. Naïve reasoners can make inferences that depend on these higher order relations, which are vital for science and mathematics, but no existing theory explains such inferences. The present paper presents a theory based on mental models of the situations under description, and it reports four experiments corroborating the theory. Experiment 1a showed that the difficulty of such inferences from two premises depends on the integration of the information from the premises into a single model. The same result held in Experiment 1b, even when individuals were not permitted to make written workings. Experiment 2 required the participants to think aloud, and their protocols revealed that they developed three main strategies. Experiment 3 biased the development of these strategies, showing that individuals assemble them “bottom up” from various tactical steps.