Preferred Mental Models in Spatial Reasoning (original) (raw)
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Preferred mental models in reasoning about spatial relations
Memory & Cognition, 2007
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.
Mental Models in Spatial Reasoning
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1998
This chapter gives an overview of our ongoing experimental research in the MeMoSpace project, concerning the cognitive processes underlying human spatial reasoning. Our theoretical background is mental model theory, which conceives reasoning as a process in which mental models of the given information are constructed and inspected to solve a reasoning task. We first report some findings of our previous work and then two new experiments on spatial relational inference, which were conducted to investigate well-known effects from relational and syllogistic reasoning. (1) Continuity effect: n-term-series problems with continuous (W r 1 X, X r 2 Y, Y r 3 Z) and semi-continuous (X r 2 Y, Y r 3 Z, W r 1 X) premise order are easier than tasks with discontinuous order (Y r 3 Z, W r 1 X, X r 2 Y).
A theory and a computational model of spatial reasoning with preferred mental models
Psychological Review, 2013
Inferences about spatial arrangements and relations like "The Porsche is parked to the left of the Dodge and the Ferrari is parked to the right of the Dodge, thus, the Porsche is parked to the left of the Ferrari," are ubiquitous. However, spatial descriptions are often interpretable in many different ways and compatible with several alternative mental models. This article suggests that individuals tackle such indeterminate multiplemodel problems by constructing a single, simple, and typical mental model but neglect other possible models. The model that first comes to reasoners' minds is the preferred mental model. It helps save cognitive resources but also leads to reasoning errors and illusory inferences. The article presents a preferred model theory and an instantiation of this theory in the form of a computational model, preferred inferences in reasoning with spatial mental models (PRISM). PRISM can be used to simulate and explain how preferred models are constructed, inspected, and varied in a spatial array that functions as if it were a spatial working memory. A spatial focus inserts tokens into the array, inspects the array to find new spatial relations, and relocates tokens in the array to generate alternative models of the problem description, if necessary. The article also introduces a general measure of difficulty based on the number of necessary focus operations (rather than the number of models). A comparison with results from psychological experiments shows that the theory can explain preferences, errors, and the difficulty of spatial reasoning problems.
Spatial comprehension and comparison processes in verification tasks
Cognitive Psychology, 1978
Two experiments use the sentence-picture verification paradigm to study encoding and comparison processes with spatial information. Subjects decided whether a spatial description of a figure or a geometric figure matched a second figure. Three critical results (the effects of display complexity, the effects of lexical markedness, and the relative speeds of "same" and "different" responses) covaried across four experimental conditions. These results demonstrate that task-specific variables can be the primary determinants of how subjects verify sentences. When the two displays were presented successively and subjects took as much time as they needed to prepare for the test figure, verification time was not affected by the pictorial complexity of the test figure or by the markedness of the relational terms used in the descriptions, and "same" responses were faster than "different" responses. When subjects had less time to study the spatial description before the test picture appeared, the effects of complexity and lexical markedness on verification time increased and were largest when the two displays appeared simultaneously; concurrently, "differents" became faster than "sames." This pattern of results is not easily handled hy current models for sentence-picture verification.
Reasoning about Spatial Consistency
2015
The consistency of spatial descriptions is relevant to tasks ranging from navigation to architecture. In contrast to studies of deduction in which a conclusion is drawn from premises, there have been only a few investigations into how human reasoners decide whether or not a description is consistent. We report results corroborating the theory that reasoners make such judgments usually relying on a single initial mental model of the description. As a result, the task is difficult if it calls for an alternative model of the assertions that must be revised. Especially the model construction process and the way of how information is integrated into a model can explain errors in evaluating problems as consistent. Implications for other theories of reasoning are discussed.
Preferred and Alternative Mental Models in Spatial Reasoning
Spatial Cognition & Computation, 2005
The mental model theory postulates that spatial reasoning relies on the construction, inspection, and the variation of mental models. Experiment 1 shows that in reasoning problems with multiple solutions, reasoners construct only a single model that is preferred over others. Experiment 2 shows that inferences conforming to these preferred mental models (PMM) are easier than inferences that are valid for alternatives. Experiments 3 and 4 support the idea that model variation consists of a model revision process. The process usually starts with the PMM and then constructs alternative models by local transformations. Models which are difficult to reach are more likely to be neglected than models which are only minor revisions of the PMM.
Cognitive processes underlying the continuity effect in spatial reasoning
It is assumed that spatial reasoning about previously obtained information that describe relations between two or more objects is based on the construction and inspection of mental models. The paper mainly focuses on the question how humans integrate spatial information that initially appeared not to be linked. Two experiments investigated the construction processes of spatial mental models and the integration of additional information into existing models. The results show that combining information that are initially not related to one another takes longer and leads to more errors. Then moreover, information presented in a continuous and a semi-continuous order was integrated sequentially, whereas information presented in a discontinuous order was first integrated sequentially into one temporary model and if necessary subsequently revised.
Human Spatial Relational Reasoning: Processing Demands, Representations, and Cognitive Model
Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Empirical findings indicate that humans draw infer- ences about spatial arrangements by constructing and manipulating mental models which are internal representations of objects and relations in spatial working memory. Central to the Mental Model Theory (MMT), is the assumption that the human reasoning process can be divided into three phases: (i) Mental model construction, (ii) model inspection, and (iii) model validation. The MMT can be formalized with respect to a computational model, connecting the reasoning process to operations on mental model representations. In this respect a computational model has been implemented in the cognitive architecture ACT-R capable of explaining human reasoning difficulty by the number of model operations. The presented ACT-R model allows simulation of psychological findings about spatial reasoning problems from a previous study that investigated conventional behavioral data such as response times and error rates in the context of certain mental m...
2013
Reasoning about inference problems that allow for multiple interpretations requires maintaining intermediate representations that, if necessary, may be reconsidered at a later stage of the solution process. In that respect we describe the process of annotating premises in spatial relational reasoning that allows for the derivation of alternative representations. Furthermore, we show how ACT-R's subsymbolic processing principles substantially contribute to the underlying theoretical framework of the Preferred Mental Model Theory as they add a powerful component making precise accuracy predictions possible, a feature that in previous symbolic approaches has been neglected. In addition, we implemented and compared two strategies to investigate the persistence of the outcomes of the reasoning process. Furthermore, we examined how well data and predictions meet the central assumption that reasoning difficulty increases with the number of mental operations necessary to validate a putative conclusion.