Preschoolers use information from interventions, namely intentional actions, to make causal inferences. We asked whether children consider some interventions to be more informative than others based on two components of an actor's knowledge state: whether an actor "possesses" causal knowledge, and whether an actor is allowed to "use" their…

The present study is aimed at identifying how prior causal beliefs and covariation information contribute to belief updating when evidence, either compatible or contradictory with those beliefs, is provided. Participants were presented with a cover story with which it was intended to activate or generate a causal belief. Variables related to the…

In November 2008 at Purdue University, the 2nd Workshop on Human Problem Solving was held. This workshop, which was a natural continuation of the first workshop devoted almost exclusively to optimization problems, addressed a wider range of topics that reflect the scope of the "Journal of Problem Solving." The workshop was attended by 35…

Students often view physiological mechanisms in descriptive terms from a perspective that does not help them recognize causal relationships. The "view from the inside" is a technique that helps students focus on causal relationships from the "viewpoint" of a reporter standing inside of the system. Qualitative data indicate that the technique helps…

The ability to use analogical reasoning traditionally has been considered a higher-level ability characteristic of thinking of older children and adults. Such reasoning has not been thought to be accessible to younger children. However, recently, it has been suggested that younger children's ability to understand and solve analogical problems…

There are several causal explanations for dyslexia, drawing on distinctions between dyslexics and control groups at genetic, biological, or cognitive levels of description. However, few theories explicitly bridge these different levels of description. In this paper, we review a long-standing theory that some dyslexics' reading impairments are due…

Causal reasoning represents one of the most basic and important cognitive processes that underpin all higher-order activities, such as conceptual understanding and problem solving. Hume called causality the "cement of the universe" [Hume (1739/2000). Causal reasoning is required for making predictions, drawing implications and…

People's reactions to coincidences are often cited as an illustration of the irrationality of human reasoning about chance. We argue that coincidences may be better understood in terms of rational statistical inference, based on their functional role in processes of causal discovery and theory revision. We present a formal definition of…

A rich narrative-style bibliography of concept mapping (reviewing six articles published between 1992-2005). Articles reviewed include: (1) Cognitive mapping: A qualitative research method for social work (C. Bitoni); (2) Collaborative concept mapping: Provoking and supporting meaningful discourse (C. Boxtel, J. Linden, E. Roelofs, and G. Erkens);…

Empirical evidence has shown that several factors influence whether a compound is represented as several independent components or as a configuration. However, most of the previous research focused on data-driven factors (e.g., modality of the stimuli presented in the experimental task). In one experiment, I analyzed the influence of people's…

A normative framework for modeling causal and counterfactual reasoning has been proposed by Spirtes, Glymour, and Scheines (1993; cf. Pearl, 2000). The framework takes as fundamental that reasoning from observation and intervention differ. Intervention includes actual manipulation as well as counterfactual manipulation of a model via thought. To…

This study sought to improve students' comprehension of scientific graphs by adapting scaffolding techniques used to aid text comprehension. In 3 experiments involving 121 female and 88 male college students, some students were shown cognitive aids prior to viewing 4 geography graphs whereas others were not; all students were then asked to write a…

The task of causal learning concerns figuring out the laws that govern how the world works. The goal of a reasoner who engages in this task is to gain an understanding of the empirical world that would guide decisions regarding actions to achieve the reasoner's objectives. The comments by P. A. White and C. Luhmann and W.-k. Ahn on P. W. Cheng and…

Examines the claim that it is necessary to change an organization's culture in order to bring about organizational change. Considers the purported causal relationship between the role of the leader and organizational learning and develops the notion of culture as cognitive process based on research in cultural anthropology and cognitive science.…

The authors outline a cognitive and computational account of causal learning in children. They propose that children use specialized cognitive systems that allow them to recover an accurate "causal map" of the world: an abstract, coherent, learned representation of the causal relations among events. This kind of knowledge can be perspicuously…