Adaptive Problem Solving and Decision Making in Complex and Changing Environments: The Role of Understanding and Explanation
Abstract
The ability to generate explanations plays a central role in human cognition and is essential for intelligent problem solving and decision making. Generating explanations requires a deep understanding of the domain and tremendous flexibility in the way concepts are accessed, combined and used. Together, the joint requirements of deep understanding and flexibility in conceptual access and use constitute challenging design requirements for a model of explanation. The Pis developed a systematic program of computational modeling to elucidate the mental representations and processes underlying ing the generation of explanations in the service of problem solving and decision making. They developed and implemented a detailed process model of explanation one that is capable of flexibly using its knowledge in the service of explaining novel cxplanada and demonstrated that it provides a good qualitative account of patterns of explanations generated by human adults in laboratory settings. The same principles the model uses to generate explanations (i.e.. reasoning "backward" to infer causes of known effects) arc also applicable to planning and problem solving (i.e.. reasoning "forward" to infer useful actions for problem solving).
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 28, 2010
- Accession Number
- ADA567233
Entities
People
- Brian H. Ross
- John E. Hummel
Organizations
- University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign