Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - A model of plausibility
AU - Connell, Louise
AU - Keane, Mark T.
N1 - 2006 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
PY - 2006/1/2
Y1 - 2006/1/2
N2 - Plausibility has been implicated as playing a critical role in many cognitive phenomena from comprehension to problem solving. Yet, across cognitive science, plausibility is usually treated as an operationalized variable or metric rather than being explained or studied in itself. This article describes a new cognitive model of plausibility, the Plausibility Analysis Model (PAM), which is aimed at modeling human plausibility judgment. This model uses commonsense knowledge of concept-coherence to determine the degree of plausibility of a target scenario. In essence, a highly plausible scenario is one that fits prior knowledge well: with many different sources of corroboration, without complexity of explanation, and with minimal conjecture. A detailed simulation of empirical plausibility findings is reported, which shows a close correspondence between the model and human judgments. In addition, a sensitivity analysis demonstrates that PAM is robust in its operations.
AB - Plausibility has been implicated as playing a critical role in many cognitive phenomena from comprehension to problem solving. Yet, across cognitive science, plausibility is usually treated as an operationalized variable or metric rather than being explained or studied in itself. This article describes a new cognitive model of plausibility, the Plausibility Analysis Model (PAM), which is aimed at modeling human plausibility judgment. This model uses commonsense knowledge of concept-coherence to determine the degree of plausibility of a target scenario. In essence, a highly plausible scenario is one that fits prior knowledge well: with many different sources of corroboration, without complexity of explanation, and with minimal conjecture. A detailed simulation of empirical plausibility findings is reported, which shows a close correspondence between the model and human judgments. In addition, a sensitivity analysis demonstrates that PAM is robust in its operations.
KW - Psychology
KW - Cognition
KW - Reasoning
KW - Plausibility
KW - Computer simulation
KW - Symbolic
KW - computational modeling
U2 - 10.1207/s15516709cog0000_53
DO - 10.1207/s15516709cog0000_53
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 21702810
VL - 30
SP - 95
EP - 120
JO - Cognitive Science
JF - Cognitive Science
SN - 0364-0213
IS - 1
ER -