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Related Experiment Videos

Explanation and understanding.

Frank C Keil1

  • 1Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8205, USA. frank.keil@yale.edu

Annual Review of Psychology
|December 2, 2005
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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People possess implicit causal knowledge and can build explanations using social and situational resources, despite incomplete understanding. This highlights cognitive flexibility in explanation construction.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Psychology
  • Philosophy of Mind

Background:

  • Explanation is crucial for high-level thought, connecting to intuitive theories, concepts, and mental models.
  • Explanations vary by causal patterns, content domains, and stances, impacting cognition.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To explore the nature of explanation and its cognitive consequences.
  • To investigate how people manage incomplete explanations and leverage external resources.

Main Methods:

  • The study synthesizes existing research on explanation, mental models, and causal reasoning.
  • It analyzes cognitive strategies for constructing explanations, including social and situational learning.

Main Results:

  • Explanations are inherently incomplete, with gaps often unrecognized by individuals.

Related Experiment Videos

  • People possess implicit causal structures and adeptly use social and situational support for real-time explanation building.
  • Developmental and cultural variations exist in explanatory schemes, but rarely are schemes entirely absent.

    • Conclusions:

    • Cognitive systems demonstrate remarkable flexibility in generating explanations despite inherent limitations.
    • Understanding these mechanisms offers new perspectives on human reasoning and knowledge acquisition.