Dipartimento di Psicologia

Descrizione del progetto

The general goal of this research proposal is to verify the hypothesis that reasoning, that is a set of mental processes that lead to the discovery of new knowledge on the basis of available information is based on the construction of dynamic mental simulations that, in the form of iconic mental models, envisage the relations between objects described in a certain situation. Specifically, we predict that individuals will spontaneously complement their mental simulations by external aids, such as one’s own gestures or different types of visual displays of the environment that provides the basis for mental simulations. Therefore, the project aims to verify the following research hypothesis: H1. The difficulty of the discovery, i.e. abduction of an algorithm depends on the complexity of this algorithm and does not depend on the number of moves that are necessary to carry out this algorithm. H2. The difficulty of carrying out a set of physical movements (e.g. changing the order of the cars of a toy train) depends on the number of moves and is independent of the complexity of the algorithm. H4. The abduction of algorithms should be easier when the participants are able to see the “environment” for the simulated process, e.g. the picture of the railway system. H5. In reasoning from numerical disjunctions illusory inferences will be suppressed, if one has an access to visual display of the number line that makes it easier to represent explicitly that if one disjunct is true, then the other is false.

Responsabile scientifico Robert Mackiewicz

Enti Partners:  Il progetto è stato sviluppato da un Framework Cooperation Agreement tra 

• University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw - Department of Psychology
• Naval Research Lab - Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, Washington, DC,
• Princeton University - Department of Psychology
• New York University - Department of Psychology

Risultati e pubblicazioni

Khemlani, S.S., Mackiewicz, R., Bucciarelli, M., e Johnson-Laird, P.N. 2013. Kinematic mental simulations in abduction and deduction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110, 16766-16771.
 
Bucciarelli, M., Mackiewicz, R., Khemlani, S.S., e Johnson-Laird, P.N. 2016. Children’s creation of algorithms: Simulations and gestures. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 28(3), 297-318. doi: 10.1080/20445911.2015.1134541
 
Bucciarelli, M., Mackiewicz, R., Khemlani, S.S., & Johnson-Laird, P.N. 2018. Simulation in children’s conscious recursive reasoning Memory & Cognition, 46, 1302- 1314. doi 10.3758/s13421-018-0838-0
 
Inoltre, ho raccontato i lavori svolti con i colleghi in occasione della Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, Dublin, Trinity College, 6 th - 7 th  December 2018 (in qualità di key-note speaker: “Informal algorithms in
children”).