In this study, we focused on the Generic Overgeneralisation(GOG) effect (Leslie, Khemlani, and Glucksberg 2011) andtested the relevance of context and an explanation based onquantifier domain restriction for the pattern of judgement dataobserved. Participants judged generic majority characteristicstatements like tigers have stripes or statements withuniversal quantifiers that have different sensitivity to context(‘all’, ‘all the’, ‘each’) preceded by one of three levels ofcontext: a) neutral, where the information in the context doesnot interact with the truth value of the critical statement, b)contradictory, where it presents an exception which shouldrule out a universally quantified statement, and c) supportive.Our results suggest that proponents of the generics-as-defaultview ruled out context prematurely and that in fact context isa viable alternative explanation for much of the so-calledGOG effect.

How, and how strongly, do default comprehension inferences shape verbal reasoning? When do they lead to fallacies? We address these questions for reasoning with polysemous verbs (verbs with distinct, but related senses) and ask when their use leads to fallacies of equivocation. The ‘linguistic salience bias hypothesis' specifies conditions where subordinate uses of unbalanced polysemes trigger defeasible default inferences that are supported only by the dominant sense but influence further cognition, regardless. But does this happen even where the verb is preceded by disambiguating context that invites subordinate interpretations from the start? We present three experimental-philosophy studies that address this question: We use the psycholinguistic cancellation paradigm and fixation time measurements to examine inferences from polysemous appearance verbs. We find that default inferences can beat even preceding contextual information. Beyond their psycho-linguistic interest, findings have important philosophical consequences.