Abstract
Three experiments examined the cognitive process of answering yes-no questions about causes. Singer’s VAIL model of question answering predicted that readers would take longer to correctly answer “no” than “don’t know” to such questions. In Experiment 1, the antecedent sentences used either the causal conjunction so orbecause. Experiment 2 compared so with an implicit causal link. In all conditions, the main prediction was strongly supported. However, when the questions referred to brief stories in Experiment 3, correct “no” and “don’t know” response latencies did not differ. It was concluded that (1) VAIL identifies the cognitive operations underlying the answering of causal questions; (2) answering yes-no questions about causes resembles answering yes-no questions about case-filling elements; (3) the yes-no versus wh- distinction is orthogonal to the type of relation asked about; and (4) studying question answering about sentences will contribute to the understanding of question answering about text.
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This research was supported by Grant No A9800 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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Singer, M. Answering yes-no questions about causes: Question acts and question categories. Memory & Cognition 14, 55–63 (1986). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209229
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209229