Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41843374›Full record

ArticlePsychonomic bulletin & review2026

Comment on: Probabilities of conditionals: The relevance effect might be confounded by the existence of boundary cases (2025) by Zhan and Wang.

Niels Skovgaard-Olsen, Karl Christoph Klauer

Abstract readComment
In one paragraph

Article in Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
0citing papers in PubMed
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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

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

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

2 authors.

Niels Skovgaard-OlsenDepartment of Psychology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. niels.skovgaard.olsen@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de.
Karl Christoph KlauerDepartment of Psychology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany.

Funding

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft 497332489Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft 560519952Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft INST 35/1597-1 FUGG
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Zhan and Wang (2025) claim that the relevance effect found in Skovgaard-Olsen et al. (2016) might be an artifact due to "boundary cases" of zero or one probabilities. The relevance effect refers to the finding that people's expectations about the probabilistic relevance of the antecedent for the consequent influences people's probability judgments of indicative conditions, "If A, then C". In Skovgaard-Olsen et al. (2016, 2017), this effect was found not by using probabilistic notions of relevance, like ΔP=P(C|A)-P(C|-A), as direct predictors of P(if A, then C). Instead, stimulus materials were pre-validated to implement different qualitative reason relation assessments of whether A is a reason for C, A reason against C, or neither, which were operationalized via categories of probabilistic relevance (positive relevance ΔP>0, negative relevance ΔP<0, irrelevance ΔP=0). Despite this, this commentary addresses the fact that the binomial statistical model used by Zhan and Wang (2025) is invalid for the type of data collected. The purpose of this paper is to do a re-analysis of the two data sets of Zhan and Wang (2025). First, we reanalyze the new data that Zhan and Wang (2025) present. Then we re-analyze the data from Skovgaard-Olsen et al. (2016), which Zhan and Wang (2025) in turn re-analyze in Table 5 of their paper. In both cases, we find that invalid statistical models were applied and that the conclusions that Zhan and Wang (2025) draw must be rejected once valid statistical models are applied.

Indexed as

JudgmentModels, StatisticalHumansProbabilityConditionalsProbabilitiesStatistical error

Identifiers

PMID41843374
PMCPMC12996367

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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.