Language and counterfactual reasoning in Chinese, English and ChineseL1-EnglishL2 reasoners

Bene Bassetti

doi:10.1177/13670069211022850

Abstract

Aims: No recent studies have investigated language effects on counterfactual reasoning in bilinguals. This paper investigates the impact of bilinguals’ native language and language of testing on counterfactual reasoning, addressing two questions: (1) Do older Chinese reasoners, educated before English became a school subject, draw different inferences, or use different cues to draw inferences, compared with English peers and younger ChineseL1 reasoners? Does knowing English affect their reasoning? and (2) Do Chinese reasoners draw different inferences, or use different cues, when tested in Chinese and when tested in English? Design: Experiment 1: The explanatory variables are first language (between-group: Chinese, English), age cohort (between-group: young, older), inferential chain length (within-group: short, long). Experiment 2: The explanatory variables are language of testing (between-group: Chinese, English) and inferential chain length (within-group: short, long). The outcome is the consequent probability rating. Open questions investigate cues used to draw inferences. Analysis: The sample comprised 188 participants. Generalised linear mixed-effects models were used for quantitative data, thematic analysis for qualitative data. Findings: Older Chinese speakers rate long-chain consequents as more probable than English peers. Chinese and English reasoners use different cues to make inferences, as do Chinese reasoners tested in Chinese L1 or English L2. Originality: This is the first paper to compare Chinese reasoners educated before and after English entered the school curriculum, and to investigate inferential chain length effects on Chinese counterfactual reasoning. It introduces a novel task (consequent evaluation), and adopts a mixed-method approach to investigate both the product and process of reasoning, using quantitative and qualitative data respectively. Significance: The study provides new evidence and interpretation for the old debate about language effects on counterfactual reasoning in cognitive psychology; shows that conditional reasoning is a fruitful topic for linguistic relativity and bilingual cognition research; and testifies that qualitative data allows detection of differences in thinking processes.

Highlights

Counterfactual reasoning, that is to say reasoning about what could have happened, plays a pervasive role in human thought, from reflecting on the consequences of past actions to evaluating scientific evidence
To test whether older ChineseL1 reasoners may be less willing than English peers and younger participants to reason within the boundaries of the story, we investigated their willingness to accept the falsity of the negated premise
There was a main effect of negated premise accuracy (χ2 = 29.59, p < 0.001), and crucially the four-way interaction (χ2 = 4.00, p = 0.046) revealed that older ChineseL1 reasoners who had rejected the negated premise falsity – those who believed that translations may have existed – had higher predicted odds of rating the long consequent as probable (b = −4.87, SE = 2.36, z = −2.06, p = 0.039)

Summary

Introduction

Counterfactual reasoning, that is to say reasoning about what could have happened, plays a pervasive role in human thought, from reflecting on the consequences of past actions to evaluating scientific evidence. Some languages – such as English – have linguistic devices that mark unequivocally the counterfactual mode; other languages – such as Chinese – do not. Based on various studies of counterfactual reasoning in ChineseL1 and EnglishL1 speakers, Bloom (1981) argued that Chinese reasoners have difficulty with counterfactual reasoning, and perform better if tested in EnglishL2, because the Chinese language does not mark counterfactuality. Following a decade of criticisms and failures to replicate, Bloom’s proposal was rejected. Work by both Bloom and his critics was marred by theoretical and methodological shortcomings (see below). The present paper, investigates whether Chinese participants with a linguistic, cultural and educational background similar to Bloom’s participants will reason counterfactually differently from English native-speaking peers, and whether Chinese comprehenders reason differently when tested in English and when tested in Chinese

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion