Speaker: Sangeet Khemlani 

Title: Toward a unified process theory of human reasoning
Abstract: Cognitive scientists have proposed more than a dozen theories of syllogisms, deductions about simplified quantified descriptions of properties. Such theory proliferation reveals the science's failure to deliver a unified account of how humans think. A unified theory should explain why people are capable of reasoning accurately, and also why they often make predictable errors. It should also explain common mental processes that underlie human thinking and reasoning across many tasks and contexts. I describe efforts towards developing such a theory by introducing mReasoner, a computational cognitive process model that assumes that people interpret linguistic and perceptual information by constructing iconic mental simulations. For example, the system builds mental simulations to represent quantified assertions, so it can explain reasoning about syllogisms and related inferences. Its high-level algorithms implement abstract processes, and so it can also reason about causal, sentential, kinematic, and spatiotemporal information. And because mental simulations can be constructed from perceptual information, it's possible to use the system, not just as a cognitive model that explains laboratory data, but also as a representation engine that facilitates human-centric communicative tasks. I conclude by demonstrating how mReasoner can operate in the context of real-time, real-world human-machine teaming.

Faculty wishing to meet with Dr. Khemlani during the day are invited to email Peter Carruthers pcarruth [at] umd.edu

Grad students wishing to join him for lunch (12:15-1:30) are invited to contact Robert Ragsdale rragsdal [at] umd.edu