Abstract
Two studies showed that adults' responses to questions involving the term “or” varied markedly depending upon the type of question presented. When presented with various objects (“A's” and “B's”) and asked to circle “all things which are ‘A’ or ‘B’” subjects tended to circle “A's” as well as “B's,” whereas when asked to circle “all the ‘A's’ or ‘B's’” subjects showed a relatively stronger tendency to circle one or the other. Moreover the nature of the sets of objects (“As” and “Bs”) influenced behavior as well. There was also evidence that the effects due to question wording or set type transferred.
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Winer, G.A. Variations in use of the term “or”. J Psycholinguist Res 19, 1–20 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01068182
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01068182