New theory on explanatory completeness

Joanna Korman and I recently published a paper in Acta Psychologica that introduces a new model-based theory on how people judge whether one explanation is more complete than another. The paper introduces both the theory as well as five...

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Ragni joins the Danish Institute of Advanced Study

Congratulations to Marco Ragni, who will start at the Danish Institute of Advanced Study in August with a joint appointment at the University of Southern Denmark! He will continue to lead the Cognitive Computation Lab at the...

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Mental models use common neural spatial structure for spatial and abstract content

Kay Alfred and colleagues (Dartmouth U.) present a new paper in Communications Biology on how spatial and abstract content implicates common neural structures traceable to model-based thinking. The abstract is here: Mental models provide a cognitive framework...

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Munroe on reasoning, rationality, and representation

In a new paper out in Synthese, Wade Munroe of the University of Michigan argues that mental models best characterize the mental operations that underlie reasoning and also help explain how to rationally update attitudes and beliefs....

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New research on factual and counterfactual conditionals

Orlando Espino and Ruth Byrne report two new papers on factual and counterfactual conditionals. In a paper now out in Cognitive Science, they show how counterfactual conditionals systematically suppress inferences. Here’s the abstract of their paper: We...

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Proving the consistency of the model theory

Phil Johnson-Laird developed a new informal proof of the consistency of the model theory of sentential reasoning (Khemlani, Byrne, & Johnson-Laird, 2018). Here’s a relevant introductory excerpt: is the model theory of sentential reasoning consistent in the...

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Ragni and Johnson-Laird ask: “Explanation or modeling?”

In the latest issue of Computational Brain & Behavior, Marco Ragni and Phil Johnson-Laird respond to recent criticism by Kellen and Klauer (same issue) about a meta-analysis of studies on the Wason selection task. Kellen and Klauer’s central points...

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New paper about some possible relations between Cognitive Linguistics and the theory of mental models

The paper is written by Miguel López-Astorga in the Journal Studii de lingvistică. This is the abstract: Cognitive Linguistics is an important approach to language and cognition that gives relevant arguments and theses on topics related to...

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Children with reading difficulties make systematic errors in transitive reasoning

A new paper in Dyslexia by Elpida Panagiotidou, Francisca Serrano, and Sergio Moreno-Ríos shows that children with reading difficulties (RD), such as dyslexia, are subject to the visual impedence effect. Their abstract is available here: This study examined reasoning...

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Bibliometric analysis of mental models research in Cognitive Processing

Chilean researchers Arturo Cárdenas-Figueroa (University of Chile) and Alexis Olmedo Navarro (Andrés Bello University) recently published a bibliometric meta-analysis of mental models research in the latest issue of Cognitive Processing. The abstract of their paper is available...

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