ABSTRACT

People can reason intuitively, efficiently, and accurately about everyday physical events. Recent accounts suggest that people use mental simulation to make such intuitive physical judgments. But mental simulation models are computationally expensive; how is physical reasoning relatively accurate, while maintaining computational tractability? We suggest that people make use of partial simulation, mentally moving forward in time only parts of the world deemed relevant. We propose a novel partial simulation model, and test it on the physical conjunction fallacy, a recently observed phenomenon [Ludwin-Peery et al. (2020). Broken physics: A conjunction-fallacy effect in intuitive physical reasoning. Psychological Science, 31(12), 1602–1611. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620957610] that poses a challenge for full simulation models. We find an excellent fit between our model's predictions and human performance on a set of scenarios that build on and extend those used by Ludwin-Peery et al. [(2020). Broken physics: A conjunction-fallacy effect in intuitive physical reasoning. Psychological Science, 31(12), 1602–1611. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620957610], quantitatively and qualitatively accounting for deviations from optimal performance. Our results suggest more generally how we allocate cognitive resources to efficiently represent and simulate physical scenes.

摘要

人们可以对日常物理事件进行直观、有效和准确的推理。最近的报道表明，人们使用心理模拟来做出这种直观的身体判断。但是心理模拟模型的计算成本很高；物理推理如何相对准确，同时保持计算的易处理性？我们建议人们使用部分模拟，在时间上仅在世界上被认为相关的部分精神上前进。我们提出了一种新颖的部分模拟模型，并在物理合取谬误上进行了测试，这是一种最近观察到的现象 [Ludwin-Peery 等人。（2020 年）。破碎的物理：直觉物理推理中的合取谬误效应。心理科学，31(12), 1602–1611。https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620957610] 这对完整的仿真模型提出了挑战。我们发现我们的模型的预测与人类在一组场景上的表现非常吻合，这些场景基于 Ludwin-Peery 等人使用的场景并进行了扩展。[（2020）。破碎的物理：直觉物理推理中的合取谬误效应。心理科学，31（12），1602-1611。https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620957610]，定量和定性地解释与最佳性能的偏差。我们的结果更普遍地表明了我们如何分配认知资源以有效地表示和模拟物理场景。