Add to ORKGHow do people reason intuitively about everyday physical events? Two broad camps provide very different answers to this question. The first camp emphasizes mental simulations: when people predict where a bouncing ball will end up, they run a mental process that roughly approximates the motion of the ball. The second camp emphasizes rules and abstractions: when reasoning about the bouncing ball, people may reason ‘the ball and table are solid, the ball can't go through the table’. Here we bring the two views together, with a model of physical reasoning that combines mental simulation and abstraction. We show behavioral signatures of both rule-usage and mental simulation in a response-time study in which participants reason about the trajecto...
While interacting with objects during every-day activities, e.g. when sliding a glass on a counter t...
For humans it is useful to be able to visually infer an object’s physical properties (e.g. weight, h...
People often draw inferences about the same mechanical situation using distinct reasoning methods. W...
In order to interact with the world, people must be able to predict how it will unfold in the future...
Mental simulation is a powerful cognitive capacity that underlies people's ability to draw inference...
In a glance, we can perceive whether a stack of dishes will topple, a branch will support a child’s ...
The field of intuitive physics has been reinvigorated in recent years, providing converging computat...
People can learn about the effects of their actions either by performing physical experiments or by ...
<p>Many human activities require precise judgments about the physical properties and dynamics of mul...
Behavior oftentimes allows for many possible interpretations in terms of mental states, such as goal...
Behavior oftentimes allows for many possible interpretations in terms of mental states, such as goal...
In this paper, we investigate how people use mental simula-tions: do people vary the number of simul...
While interacting with objects during every-day activities, e.g. when sliding a glass on a counter t...
Our days are filled with instances of reasoning about the physics of the world, from simple tasks su...
The physical world is rich with social information that people readily detect and extract, such as i...
While interacting with objects during every-day activities, e.g. when sliding a glass on a counter t...
For humans it is useful to be able to visually infer an object’s physical properties (e.g. weight, h...
People often draw inferences about the same mechanical situation using distinct reasoning methods. W...
In order to interact with the world, people must be able to predict how it will unfold in the future...
Mental simulation is a powerful cognitive capacity that underlies people's ability to draw inference...
In a glance, we can perceive whether a stack of dishes will topple, a branch will support a child’s ...
The field of intuitive physics has been reinvigorated in recent years, providing converging computat...
People can learn about the effects of their actions either by performing physical experiments or by ...
<p>Many human activities require precise judgments about the physical properties and dynamics of mul...
Behavior oftentimes allows for many possible interpretations in terms of mental states, such as goal...
Behavior oftentimes allows for many possible interpretations in terms of mental states, such as goal...
In this paper, we investigate how people use mental simula-tions: do people vary the number of simul...
While interacting with objects during every-day activities, e.g. when sliding a glass on a counter t...
Our days are filled with instances of reasoning about the physics of the world, from simple tasks su...
The physical world is rich with social information that people readily detect and extract, such as i...
While interacting with objects during every-day activities, e.g. when sliding a glass on a counter t...
For humans it is useful to be able to visually infer an object’s physical properties (e.g. weight, h...
People often draw inferences about the same mechanical situation using distinct reasoning methods. W...