{"pk":28053,"title":"How people detect incomplete explanations","subtitle":null,"abstract":"In theory, there exists no bound to a causal explanation – every\nexplanation can be elaborated further. But reasoners rate some\nexplanations as more complete than others. To account for this\nbehavior, we developed a novel theory of the detection of\nexplanatory incompleteness. The theory is based on the idea\nthat reasoners construct mental models of causal explanations.\nBy default, each causal relation refers to a single mental model.\nReasoners should consider an explanation complete when they\ncan construct a single mental model, but incomplete when they\nmust consider multiple models. Reasoners should thus rate\ncausal chains, e.g., A causes B and B causes C, as more\ncomplete than “common cause” explanations (e.g., A causes B\nand A causes C) or “common effect” explanations (e.g., A\ncauses C and B causes C). Two experiments validate the\ntheory's prediction. The data suggest that reasoners construct\nmental models when generating explanations.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"explanatory reasoning"},{"word":"incompleteness"},{"word":"causal\nreasoning"},{"word":"mental models"}],"section":"Publication-based-Talks","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1vg5g5qc","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Joanna","middle_name":"","last_name":"Korman","name_suffix":"","institution":"Navy Center for Applied Researcher in Artificial Intelligence","department":""},{"first_name":"Sangeet","middle_name":"","last_name":"Khemlani","name_suffix":"","institution":"Navy Center for Applied Researcher in Artificial Intelligence","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2018-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/28053/galley/17692/download/"}]}