Semantics as a foundation for psychology: a case study of Wason's selection task
Keith Stenning, Michiel van Lambalgen

Abstract:
We review the various explanations that have been offered to account for 
subjects' behaviour in Wason's famous selection task. 
We argue that one element that is lacking is a good understanding of 
subjects' semantics for the key expressions involved, and an understanding 
of how this semantics is affected by the demands the task puts upon the 
subject's cognitive system. We make novel proposals in these terms for 
explaining the major content effects of deontic materials. 
Throughout we illustrate with excerpts from tutorial dialogues which 
motivate the kinds of analysis proposed. Our long term goal is an 
integration of the various insights about conditional reasoning on offer 
from different cognitive science methodologies. The purpose of this paper 
is to try to draw the attention of logicians and semanticists to this 
area, since we believe that empirical investigation of the cognitive 
processes involved could benefit from semantic analyses. 

Keyword(s):  Conditionals, anaphora, psychology of reasoning, semantics