Memory accessibility shapes explanation: Testing key claims of the inherence heuristic account

Abstract

People understand the world by constructing explanations for what they observe. It is thus important to identify the cognitive processes underlying these judgments. According to a recent proposal, everyday explanations are often constructed heuristically: Because people need to generate explanations on a moment-by-moment basis, they cannot perform an exhaustive search through the space of possible reasons and may instead use the information that is most easily accessible in memory (Cimpian & Salomon 2014a, 2014b. In the present research, we tested two key claims of this proposal that have so far not been investigated. First, we tested whetheras previously hypothesized-the information about an entity that is most accessible in memory tends to consist of inherent or intrinsic facts about that entity rather than extrinsic (contextual, historical, etc.) facts about it (Studies 1 and 2). Second, we tested the implications of this difference in the memory accessibility of inherent vs. extrinsic facts for the process of generating explanations: Does the fact that inherent facts are more accessible than relevant extrinsic facts give rise to an inherence bias in the content of the explanations generated (Studies 3 and 4)? The findings supported the proposal that everyday explanations are generated in part via a heuristic process that relies on easily accessible-and often inherent-information from memory.Keywords: explanation; heuristics; inherence heuristic; memory; accessibility Memory Accessibility Shapes Explanation 3 Memory Accessibility Shapes Explanation: Testing Key Claims of the Inherence Heuristic AccountThe ability to generate explanations allows people to abstract meaning from everyday experiences. From a young age, we make sense of the world by seeking to explain what we observe and what we hear from others (e.g., Carey, 1985;Gelman, 2003;Gopnik, 1998; Keil, 2006; Lombrozo, 2012;Wellman, 2011). What underlies the ability to explain? The literature on this topic provides many insights into the workings of everyday explanations, including their typical structure (i.e., the "ingredients" that go into a satisfying explanation; e.g., Lombrozo & Carey, 2006; Lombrozo, 2007;Sloman, 2005) and their influence on learning (e.g., Chi, Bassok, Lewis, Reimann, & Glaser, 1989;Legare & Lombrozo, 2014; Lombrozo & Gwynne, 2014;Murphy & Allopenna, 1994).Comparatively speaking, however, research on the processes by which people generate explanations is relatively scarce (but see the literature on the related problem of generating causal hypotheses: e.g., Ahn, Kalish, Medin, & Gelman, 1995; Johnson & Keil, 2014; Lagnado & Sloman, 2006). Perhaps one of the most significant omissions in the recent work on explanation concerns the ways in which the dynamics of memory retrieval shape the search for explanations. Even though making sense of most observations requires that reasoners access knowledge stored in long-term memory (e.g., Lombrozo, 2006Lombrozo, , 2012, the research on explanations has seldom explored systema...

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