Thinking about conditionals: a study of individual differences.

Recent studies have shown the existence of two qualitatively distinct groups of people based on how they judge the probability of a conditional statement. The present study was designed to test whether these differences are rooted in distinctive means of processing conditional statements and whether they are linked to differences in general intelligence. In the study, each of 120 participants completed three separate cognitive tasks involving the processing of abstract conditional statements--the probability-of-conditionals task, the conditional truth table task, and the conditional inference task--in addition to completing a test of general intelligence (AH4).