Limits on the use of simulation in physical reasoning
Abstract
In this paper, we describe three experiments involving simple physical judgments and predictions, and argue their results are generally inconsistent with three core commitments of probabilistic mental simulation theory (PMST). The first experiment shows that people routinely fail to track the spatio-temporal identity of objects. The second experiment shows that people often incorrectly reverse the order of consequential physical events when making physical predictions. Finally, we demonstrate a physical version of the conjunction fallacy where participants rate the probability of two joint events as more likely to occur than a constituent event of that set. These results high-light the limitations or boundary conditions of simulation theory.
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Bibtex entry:
@inproceedings{ludwin2019limits,
abstract = {In this paper, we describe three experiments involving simple physical judgments and predictions, and argue their results are generally inconsistent with three core commitments of probabilistic mental simulation theory (PMST). The first experiment shows that people routinely fail to track the spatio-temporal identity of objects. The second experiment shows that people often incorrectly reverse the order of consequential physical events when making physical predictions. Finally, we demonstrate a physical version of the conjunction fallacy where participants rate the probability of two joint events as more likely to occur than a constituent event of that set. These results high-light the limitations or boundary conditions of simulation theory.},
address = {Austin, TX},
author = {Ludwin-Peery, E. and Bramley, N.R. and Davis, E. and Gureckis, T.M.},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society},
editor = {Goel, A.K. and Seifert, C.M. and Freksa, C.},
publisher = {Cognitive Science Society},
title = {Limits on the use of simulation in physical reasoning},
year = {2019}}QR Code:
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