Preferred mental models in reasoning about spatial relations

Jahn, Georg; Knauff, Markus; Johnson‐Laird, P. N.

doi:10.3758/bf03192939

Cited by 63 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…The Spanish and Moroccan groups were significantly different from each other (70.7 % vs. 38.3 %, respectively), t(1, 34) = 3.70, p < .001. Consistent with the findings of Jahn et al (2007) with German participants, Spanish participants preferred to represent the mentioned objects from left to right (with the lamp on the left and the TV on the right). In contrast, Moroccan participants showed the opposite bias (see Fig.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 84%

“…Many studies show that, in a task like this, the preferred mental model places the mentioned objects in a linear array, either a horizontal or a vertical one (see Evans, Newstead, & Byrne, 1993, for a review). Jahn, Knauff, and Johnson-Laird (2007) studied how mental models are used to reason about such static spatial configurations. They presented sets of descriptions of scenes and asked participants to judge whether the set was consistent or not.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Otherwise, participants will tend to claim that the premises are inconsistent or will take longer to find the correct answer. Jahn et al (2007) postulated that the preferred initial model should include the three mentioned objects in leftto-right (L-R) order. For the example above, a schematic model of this kind would be:…”

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confidence: 99%

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Spatial biases in understanding descriptions of static scenes: the role of reading and writing direction

2013

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Prior studies on reasoning tasks have shown lateral spatial biases on mental model construction, which converge with known spatial biases in the mental representation of number, time, and events. The latter have been shown to be related to habitual reading and writing direction. The present study bridges and extends both research strands by looking at the processes of mental model construction in language comprehension and examining how they are influenced by reading and writing direction. Sentences like "the table is between the lamp and the TV" were auditorily presented to groups of mono-and bidirectional readers in languages with left-to-right or right-to-left scripts, and participants were asked to draw the described scene. There was a clear preference for deploying the lateral objects in the direction marked by the script of the input language and some hints of a much smaller effect of the degree of practice with the script. These lateral biases occurred in the context of universal strategies for working memory management.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 84%

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confidence: 99%

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Spatial biases in understanding descriptions of static scenes: the role of reading and writing direction

2013

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“…In contrast, inferences about the relation between D and E become much harder when a description is consistent with two different layouts, which call either for two models, or at least some way to keep track of the spatial indeterminacy (30)(31)(32). Yet, such descriptions can avoid the need for an initial transitive inference, and so mental logic fails to make the correct prediction.…”

Section: Iconsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Mental models and human reasoning

Johnson‐Laird

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

372

207

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To be rational is to be able to reason. Thirty years ago psychologists believed that human reasoning depended on formal rules of inference akin to those of a logical calculus. This hypothesis ran into difficulties, which led to an alternative view: reasoning depends on envisaging the possibilities consistent with the starting point-a perception of the world, a set of assertions, a memory, or some mixture of them. We construct mental models of each distinct possibility and derive a conclusion from them. The theory predicts systematic errors in our reasoning, and the evidence corroborates this prediction. Yet, our ability to use counterexamples to refute invalid inferences provides a foundation for rationality. On this account, reasoning is a simulation of the world fleshed out with our knowledge, not a formal rearrangement of the logical skeletons of sentences.H uman beings are rational-a view often attributed to Aristotle-and a major component of rationality is the ability to reason (1). A task for cognitive scientists is accordingly to analyze what inferences are rational, how mental processes make these inferences, and how these processes are implemented in the brain. Scientific attempts to answer these questions go back to the origins of experimental psychology in the 19th century. Since then, cognitive scientists have established three robust facts about human reasoning. First, individuals with no training in logic are able to make logical deductions, and they can do so about materials remote from daily life. Indeed, many people enjoy pure deduction, as shown by the world-wide popularity of Sudoku problems (2). Second, large differences in the ability to reason occur from one individual to another, and they correlate with measures of academic achievement, serving as proxies for measures of intelligence (3). Third, almost all sorts of reasoning, from 2D spatial inferences (4) to reasoning based on sentential connectives, such as if and or, are computationally intractable (5). As the number of distinct elementary propositions in inferences increases, reasoning soon demands a processing capacity exceeding any finite computational device, no matter how large, including the human brain.

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“…Likewise, reasoners try to construct initial models that do not call for a rearrangement of entities (e.g. Jahn, Knauff, & Johnson-Laird, 2007;Knauff & Ragni, 2011), and inferences that call for such rearrangements are more difficult than those that do not (e.g. Krumnack, Bucher, Nejasmic, Nebel, & Knauff, 2011).…”

Section: Icons and Symbolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a Unified Theory of Reasoning

Johnson‐Laird

Khemlani

2013

Psychology of Learning and Motivation

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This article describes a theory that uses mental models to integrate deductive, inductive, and probabilistic reasoning. It spells out the main principles of the theory and illustrates them with examples from various domains. It shows how models underlie inductions, explanations, estimates of probabilities, and informal algorithms. In all these cases, a central principle is that the mind represents each sort of possibility in a separate mental model and infers whatever holds in the resulting set of models. Finally, the article reviews what has been accomplished in implementing the theory in a single large-scale computer program, mReasoner.

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Preferred mental models in reasoning about spatial relations

Cited by 63 publications

References 42 publications

Spatial biases in understanding descriptions of static scenes: the role of reading and writing direction

Spatial biases in understanding descriptions of static scenes: the role of reading and writing direction

Mental models and human reasoning

Toward a Unified Theory of Reasoning

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