CAREER: Understanding the Role of Explanation in Cognition

这项拟议的研究开发并测试了一种解释，以更好地理解它在认知中的作用。中心假设是，解释具有某些属性，这些属性作为一种机制来发展知识结构，这些结构在支持概括、预测和干预的意义上是有用的。这项研究的主要问题是，解释如何有助于这些知识的形成。对解释的评估是基于几个解释的优点--这些特性提高了解释的感知质量。这项拟议的研究考虑了两个线索：解释的简单性和它的广度或统一不同现象的能力。这两者都在科学和科学哲学中被引用，并在统计学和计算机科学中以规范的理由被证明是合理的。这项研究描述了三种研究。实验室研究将有助于确定首选解释的特征，对通过在线环境寻求和产生的解释进行更自然的研究，以及比较促使学习者生成解释或听取事实的条件的实验。目标是理解解释的功能和内容。

The proposed research develops and tests an account of explanation to better understand its role in cognition. The central hypothesis is that explanations have certain properties that serve as a mechanism for the development of knowledge structures that are useful in the sense that they support generalization, prediction, and intervention. The primary question that this research asks is how explanation might contribute to the formation of such knowledge. Explanations are evaluated on the basis of several explanatory virtues - properties that increase the perceived quality of explanations. The proposed research considers two cues: an explanation's simplicity and its breadth or ability to unify diverse phenomena. Both are invoked in science and philosophy of science, and are justified on normative grounds within statistic and computer science. The study describes three kinds of studies. Lab studies that will help identify features of preferred explanations, a more naturalistic study of explanations that are sought and produced via an online environment, and an experiment to compare conditions in which learners are prompted to generate an explanation or listen to facts. The goal is to understand both the function and content of explanations.