Explanation generation: Questions direct exploration in semantic space

In everyday reasoning and scientific inquiry, explanations help people make sense of their experiences and observations. We investigate how people generate new possible explanations. Specifically, we study how the phrasing of "why" questions shapes exploration of the space of possible explanations. We hypothesized that rephrasing a question comparing two keywords to make one or the other more focal would guide people toward explanations that are more closely related to the focal word. Using a pre-trained machine learning model, we measured how closely each explanation aligned with the comparison words. In Study 1, we manipulated the order of the two keywords and found that explanations aligned more strongly with the earlier words. However, this design did not distinguish whether the effect was driven by the primacy of the words or the pragmatics of the question. In Study 2, we then independently manipulated which word appeared first and which word served as the grammatical subject, and found that participants were more likely to generate explanations related to the subject. These findings highlight how the phrasing of a question can shape explanation generation, demonstrating that pragmatic understanding influences how people explore a conceptual space.