Context effects in the complementary inference

Complementary inferences depend on the part-whole relation and are of special interest among deductive inferences since they play a decisive role in arithmetic additive problem solving. Conditions underlying the achievement of these inferences have been studied among 10 years old children in a simplified version of Mastermind, associated to a response program aimed at placing the participants in comparable situations. Three situations were compared: a non thematic situation, close to the usual version of Mastermind, an irrelevant thematic situation, relying on a narrative structure in which the semantic properties of the situation were not relevant for the complementary inference; and a relevant thematic situation, in which the part-whole dimension was made salient by the introduction of two exclusive categories. In accordance with our hypotheses, the complementary inferences were seldom achieved in the first two conditions (22 %, 11 %), and frequently in the third one (44 %). These results suggest that complementary inferences are facilitated by the realistic nature of the problem situations only if the semantic properties of the situations make salient a structure adapted to the application of the inference.

Bosc-Miné, C. & Sander, E. (2007). Effets du contexte sur la mise en œuvre de l’inférence de complément. L’Année Psychologique,107(3), 397-425.

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