Recently, the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review put together a special issue on the Process of Explanation (guest edited by Andrei Cimpian and Frank Keil). I read almost all the papers in the special issue — they’re excellent and well worth your time. I participated in a Digital Event (organized by Stephan Lewandowsky) where I synthesized some of the… Continue reading

Monica Bucciarelli, Robert Mackiewicz, Phil Johnson-Laird and I recently published a new paper in the Journal of Cognitive Psychology describing a theory of how children use mental simulations and gestures to reason about simple algorithms, such as reversing the order of items in list. Here’s a link to the paper, and here’s the abstract: Experiments showed… Continue reading

I have a new paper out in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience on a theory, computer model, and robotic implementation of event segmentation and temporal reasoning. The paper is with Tony Harrison and Greg Trafton. Here’s the link and here’s the abstract: We describe a novel computational theory of how individuals segment perceptual information into representations of events.… Continue reading

I’ve been doing a bit of work on causal reasoning lately with my colleagues, Paul Bello, Geoff Goodwin, and Phil Johnson-Laird. Here are links to three papers that I’ll be presenting at CogSci 2015 in Pasadena, CA later this summer: Bello, P., Khemlani, S. A model-based theory of omissive causation. Khemlani, S., Goodwin, G., Johnson-Laird,… Continue reading

I wrote a paper with Phil Johnson-Laird and Geoff Goodwin that reviews recent developments in theories of human reasoning. It seeks to explain how logic and probability fit together with cognitive processes of inference. You can download it here, and here’s the abstract: This review addresses the long-standing puzzle of how logic and probability fit… Continue reading

I published a computational model of immediate quantification inferences in QJEP with my co-authors, Max Lotstein, Greg Trafton, and Phil Johnson-Laird. You can download it here, and here’s the abstract: We propose a theory of immediate inferences from assertions containing a single quantifier, such as: All of the artists are bakers; therefore, some of the… Continue reading

Max Lotstein, Phil Johnson-Laird and I published a paper in Cognitive Science on how people estimate unique probabilities, like the probability that Jeb Bush will be elected US President in 2016. The theory hinges on how mental models of beliefs are used to update iconic representations of probability. Here’s a link and here’s the abstract:… Continue reading

I recently gave a talk on the conditional probabilities of unique events (Khemlani, Lotstein, & Johnson-Laird, 2014) at the 8th London Reasoning Workshop at Birkbeck College. You can download the presentation here. Continue reading

I recently published a paper on kinematic mental simulations in PNAS. The paper is with Monica Bucciarelli, Robert Mackiewicz, and Phil Johnson-Laird, and it examines how reasoners without any background in computer science or logic can construct mental “algorithms” in a systematic way, akin to recipes or driving directions. Continue reading