Preferred and Alternative Mental Models in Spatial Reasoning

Rauh, Reinhold; Hagen, Cornelius; Knauff, Markus; Kuss, Thomas; Schlieder, Christoph; Strube, Gerhard

doi:10.1207/s15427633scc052&3_7

Cited by 31 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…This finding agrees with the grounded cognition approach and is more difficult to explain based on purely symbolic cognitive theories. The finding also agrees with the mental model theory of reasoning, in which people reason spatially by constructing, inspecting and varying spatial mental models that mirror the situation described in the premises (Knauff, Rauh, & Schlieder, 1995;Ragni, Knauff, & Nebel, 2005;Rauh, Hagen, Kuss, Knauff, Schlieder, & Strube, 2005;. If such a model is then contradicted by a new fact, people try to revise the model by local transformations.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 81%

Grounded spatial belief revision

2015

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Beliefs frequently undergo revisions, especially when new pieces of information are true but inconsistent with current beliefs. In previous studies, we showed that spatial belief revision is often guided by the functional asymmetry between the reference object and the located objects of the spatial relation. Here we first draw a connection between spatial belief revision and grounded cognition. In two experiments, we explored whether imagined physical properties of objects influence which object is relocated and which remains at its initial position. Participants mentally revised beliefs about the arrangement of objects which could be envisaged as small and large (Experiment 1) or easy to move and difficult to move (Experiment 2). The results show that (1) small objects are more often relocated than larger objects and (2) easy to move objects are faster relocated than difficult to move objects. The findings are in line with the idea of grounded cognition.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 81%

Grounded spatial belief revision

2015

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“…The results showed that whenever a reasoning problem has multiple solutions, reasoners prefer one of them and that individuals consistently prefer the same solution. This suggests that participants indeed integrate the information from the premises and inspect unified mental representations to find new information not given in the premises (Knauff, Rauh, & Schlieder, 1995;Rauh, Hagen, Knauff, Kuß, Schlieder, & Strube, 2005;Vandierendonck, Dierckx, & De Vooght, 2004).…”

Section: Knauffmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Neuro-Cognitive Theory of Deductive Relational Reasoning with Mental Models and Visual Images

Knauff

2009

Spatial Cognition & Computation

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“…The model theory is based on a fundamental principle of parsimony according to which individuals tend to construct only a single, simple, and typical model (Goodwin & JohnsonLaird, 2005;Johnson-Laird, 2006). A crucial issue is, accordingly, which model of a set of assertions individuals are likely to construct first-that is, which is the preferred model (Knauff, Rauh, & Schlieder, 1995;Knauff, Rauh, Schlieder, & Strube, 1998;Rauh et al, 2005). Depending on this initial model, the task of evaluating consistency can be easy or hard.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Preferred mental models in reasoning about spatial relations

2007

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The theory of mental models postulates that individuals infer that a spatial description is consistent only if they can construct a model in which all the assertions in the description are true. Individuals prefer a parsimonious representation, and so, when a description is consistent with more than one possible layout of entities on the left-right dimension, individuals in our culture prefer to construct models working from left to right. They also prefer to locate entities referred to in the same assertion as adjacent to one another in a model. And, if possible, they tend to chunk entities into a single unit in order to capture several possibilities in a single model. We report four experiments corroborating these predictions. The results shed light on the integration of relational assertions, and they show that participants exploit implicit constraints in building models of spatial relations.

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Preferred and Alternative Mental Models in Spatial Reasoning

Cited by 31 publications

References 26 publications

Grounded spatial belief revision

Grounded spatial belief revision

A Neuro-Cognitive Theory of Deductive Relational Reasoning with Mental Models and Visual Images

Preferred mental models in reasoning about spatial relations

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