Preferred Mental Models: How and Why They Are So Important in Human Reasoning with Spatial Relations

Ragni, Marco; Fangmeier, Thomas; Webber, Lara; Knauff, Markus

doi:10.1007/978-3-540-75666-8_11

Cited by 12 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Conclusions are generated or verified based on the preferred mental model. This behavior may lead to logically incorrect answers and fits well to typical errors and performance rates of human subjects (Ragni et al, 2007;Ragni and Brüssow, 2011). The focus introduces a general measure of difficulty based on the number of necessary focus operations (rather than the number of models).…”

Section: Prismsupporting

confidence: 69%

“…This research question has been investigated for determinate and indeterminate problems. This effect has been identified for spatial relations as diverse as left and right (Ragni et al, 2007), for interval relations (Rauh et al, 2005), for topological relations (Knauff and Ragni, 2011), and for the eight cardinal directions (north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-west, west, north-west;Ragni and Klein, 2012).…”

Section: Preference Effectmentioning

confidence: 94%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Predictive Power of Spatial Relational Reasoning Models: A New Evaluation Approach

2021

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the last few decades, cognitive theories for explaining human spatial relational reasoning have increased. Few of these theories have been implemented as computational models, however, even fewer have been compared computationally to each other. A computational model comparison requires, among other things, a still missing quantitative benchmark of core spatial relational reasoning problems. By presenting a new evaluation approach, this paper addresses: (1) developing a benchmark including raw data of participants, (2) reimplementation, adaptation, and extension of existing cognitive models to predict individual responses, and (3) a thorough evaluation of the cognitive models on the benchmark data. The paper shifts the research focus of cognitive modeling from reproducing aggregated response patterns toward assessing the predictive power of models for the individual reasoner. It demonstrate that not all psychological effects can discern theories. We discuss implications for modeling spatial relational reasoning.

show abstract

Section: Prismsupporting

confidence: 69%

Section: Preference Effectmentioning

confidence: 94%

The Predictive Power of Spatial Relational Reasoning Models: A New Evaluation Approach

2021

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The rationale behind this is that interfering linguistic processes could thus be inhibited. In this respect, the present study bridges a gap between the fMRI study by Fangmeier et al (2006) and Ragni et al (2007): Fangmeier et al investigated only determinate problems but presented the material in a plain and functional way, whereas Ragni et al covered a wide range of indeterminate problems but presented premise information verbally.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 80%

“…Earlier versions of the presented model were reported previously (Ragni, Fangmeier, & Brüssow, 2010;Ragni & Brüssow, 2011). It was originally developed to test ACT-R's BOLD function (Anderson, 2007) with fMRI data obtained from a study by Fangmeier, Knauff, Ruff, and Sloutsky (2006) and tested with more sophisticated behavioral data obtained from a study by Ragni, Fangmeier, Webber, and Knauff (2007). Fangmeier et al investigated phases of the reasoning process using only determinate tasks whereas the study of Ragni et al reported data restricted to indeterminate tasks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An ACT-R Approach to Reasoning about Spatial Relations with Preferred and Alternative Mental Models

Brüssow¹,

Frorath²,

Ragni³

et al. 2012

PsycEXTRA Dataset

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A computational model of spatial relational reasoning implemented in the ACT-R cognitive architecture allows for the simulation of a wide range of behavioral data in the context of both determinate and indeterminate deductive spatial reasoning tasks. In that respect the presented study bridges the gap between results of previous work that investigated determinacy conditions separately. ACT-R's subsymbolic processing principles substantially contribute to the underlying theory of Preferred Mental Models as they add a powerful component making precise accuracy predictions possible. In addition, the data is informative about a possible strategy when the task is to judge if an externally presented spatial description matches a mental model that resulted from the current reasoning process.

show abstract

“…Anyone realising this and representing these possibilities mentally, needs to invest more working memory effort than someone only representing one of both. In fact, it has convincingly been shown (Goodwin & Johnson-Laird, 2005;Jahn et al, 2007;Ragni et al, 2007) that reasoners by default only do construct one of both, the explanation being that this is done because of parsimonious use of working memory. In general, working memory capacity is known to limit reasoning capability (Cf.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Schoolchildren’s transitive reasoning with the spatial relation ‘is left/right of’

Demiddele

Heyman

Schaeken

2020

Thinking & Reasoning

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We examine schoolchildren's reasoning with spatial relations, such as 'is to the left of'. Our aims are to obtain a more precise account of the effect of working memory on reasoning, a more detailed understanding of the internal representation of mental models and a developmental perspective. We discuss two experiments in which 348 children, between eight and twelve years old, needed to verify conclusions for 24 reasoning problems describing the spatial relations between pieces of clothing. In both experiments, children in the experimental condition were allowed to take notes by means of paper and pencil. We find that the participants spontaneously draw iconic representations of the items' spatial ordering, have a strong preference for only considering one possible state of affairs even when more are relevant, and that an explanation in terms of working memory capacity alone cannot fully explain the data.

show abstract

Preferred Mental Models: How and Why They Are So Important in Human Reasoning with Spatial Relations

Cited by 12 publications

References 13 publications

The Predictive Power of Spatial Relational Reasoning Models: A New Evaluation Approach

The Predictive Power of Spatial Relational Reasoning Models: A New Evaluation Approach

An ACT-R Approach to Reasoning about Spatial Relations with Preferred and Alternative Mental Models

Schoolchildren’s transitive reasoning with the spatial relation ‘is left/right of’

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About