{"pk":33154,"title":"How People Reason about Temporal Relations","subtitle":null,"abstract":"The paper describes a theory of temporal reasoning and its implementation in a computer program. The theory postulates that individuals construct mental models, and it predicts that inferences that call for only one model to be constructed, such as: a happens before b. b happens before c. d happens while b. e happens while c. What is the temporal relation between d and e? will be easier than those that call for multiple models, such as a problem identical to the previous one except for its first premise: a happens before c. Experiment 1 showed that subjects were faster and more accurate with one-model problems than with multiple-model problems. They look more time to read a premise leading to multiple models than the corresponding premise in a one-model problem. Experiment 2 showed that if the question came first and was presented with all the premises, then subjects can ignore an irrelevant premise. As predicted, the difference between one-model and multiple-model problems with valid conclusions then disappeared. Experiment 3 showed that the size of a model, i.e., the number of events in it, and the distance apart of the critical events, also affected performance.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"17","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/50v048q1","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Walter","middle_name":"","last_name":"Schaeken","name_suffix":"","institution":"Department of Psychology Tiensestraat","department":""},{"first_name":"Philip","middle_name":"N.","last_name":"Johnson-Laird","name_suffix":"","institution":"Princeton University","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"1995-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/33154/galley/24215/download/"}]}