Temporal deductive reasoning

One can distinguish two ways of thinking about temporal order. Events can be described in terms of A-series, i.e., an event is past, present, or future. On the other hand, events can also be described in terms of B-series, i.e., an event can be earlier or later than another. In Experiment 1-5 and 7, reasoning with problems in terms of A-series and B-series are investigated. Experiment 6 investigated the influence of memory. The results imply that reasoning about temporal relations depends on building the mental models of the sequences of the events and not on applying formal rules of inference. Indeed, one-model problems were solved better and faster than multiple-model problems. It was not important whether the problems were transitive or not.