Similarity judgements: the comparison of normative predictions and subjective evaluations - A study of the ratio model of similarity in social context.

Introduction: This study examines the consistency between subjective similarity evaluations and the theoretical predictions derived from Tversky's ratio model of similarity, alongside the impact of additional positive and negative features on perceived similarity to ideal and bad politicians.

Methods: Using a sample of 120 participants, we assessed the similarity of eight candidate profiles to an ideal and bad politician, varying in positive and negative features. Participants' subjective evaluations were compared with theoretical predictions derived from Tversky's ratio model.

Is good more alike than bad? Positive-negative asymmetry in the differentiation between options. A study on the evaluation of fictitious political profiles.

Our research focuses on the perception of difference in the evaluations of positive and negative options. The literature provides evidence for two opposite effects: on the one hand, negative objects are said to be more differentiated (e.g.

Recursion in programs, thought, and language.

This article presents a theory of recursion in thinking and language. In the logic of computability, a function maps one or more sets to another, and it can have a recursive definition that is semi-circular, i.e.

Kinematic mental simulations in abduction and deduction.

We present a theory, and its computer implementation, of how mental simulations underlie the abductions of informal algorithms and deductions from these algorithms. Three experiments tested the theory's predictions, using an environment of a single railway track and a siding. This environment is akin to a universal Turing machine, but it is simple enough for nonprogrammers to use.

Reasoning from connectives and relations between entities.

This article reports investigations of inferences that depend both on connectives between clauses, such as or else, and on relations between entities, such as in the same place as. Participants made more valid inferences from biconditionals--for instance, Ann is taller than Beth if and only if Beth is taller than Cath--than from exclusive disjunctions (Exp. 1).