Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40808460›Full record

ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2025

Relevant answers to polar questions.

Robert D Hawkins, Polina Tsvilodub, Claire Augusta Bergey, Noah D Goodman, Michael Franke

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Quantifying Epistemic Relevance.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2026
    Article
  2. Relevant answers to polar questions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025
    Article
  3. At the heart of human communication: new views on the complex relationship between pragmatics and Theory of Mind.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Robert D Hawkins *Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.ORCID 0000-0001-9089-8544
Polina Tsvilodub *Eberhard Karls Universitat Tubingen, Tubingen, Baden-Württemberg 72074, Germany.
Claire Augusta BergeyDepartment of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.ORCID 0000-0001-7587-4202
Noah D GoodmanDepartment of Psychology and Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Michael FrankeEberhard Karls Universitat Tubingen, Tubingen, Baden-Württemberg 72074, Germany.

Funding

Deutsche ForschungsgemeinschaftDivision of Behavioral and Cognitive SciencesNSF 2404676
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

People often provide answers that go beyond what a question literally asks, but it has been difficult to pin down what makes some answers more relevant than others. Here, we introduce Pragmatic Reasoning In Overinformative Responses to Polar Questions (PRIOR-PQ), a probabilistic cognitive model formalizing how people use theory of mind (ToM) to produce and interpret relevantly overinformative answers to yes-no questions. Specifically, PRIOR-PQ grounds the pragmatics of question answering in inferences about the underlying

Indexed as

CognitionCommunicationLanguageTheory of MindThinkingHumanscomputational modelinglarge language modelspragmatic reasoningprobabilistic pragmaticsquestion–answer dialoguetheory of mind

Identifiers

PMID40808460
PMCPMC12351304

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.