Logic vs. linguistics? The role of age and context when interpreting “or” in different situations
Conference contribution (Article) › Research › Peer reviewed
Publication data
| By | Lena Katharina Göpel, Lara Aylin Petersen, Aiso Heinze |
| Original language | English |
| Published in | Claudia Cornejo, Patricio Felmer, David M. Gómez, Pablo Dartnell, Paula Araya, Armando Peri, Valeria Randolph (Eds.), Proceedings of the 48th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education: Research Reports (vol. 1) |
| Pages | 339-346 |
| Editor (Publisher) | PME |
| Publication status | Published – 07.2025 |
Boolean operators are fundamental in mathematics and information technology but the interpretation of the according linguistic equivalent (e.g. the word “or”) might be ambiguous (OR, XOR), potentially leading to confusion. We present data from a pilot study of 33 subjects aged 7 years up to adults. The participants solved four questions, each of them allowing an OR (inclusive or) or XOR (exclusive “either…or”) interpretation. In two questions the "or" was embedded in an extra-mathematical context from everyday life. In the other two questions the “or” was embedded in a simple mathematical context. We observed substantial interpretation differences associated with the context (preferred OR interpretation in mathematical context and nearly equal OR and XOR interpretation in extra-mathematical context).
