Oskar Pineño, Ralph R Miller
Comparing associative, statistical, and inferential reasoning accounts of human contingency learning
Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006)
people unique ability represent peoples internal thoughts feelingstheir mental states mental state knowledge rich conceptual structure organized along key dimensions valence people use conceptual structure guide social interactions people acquire understanding structure investigate underexplored contributor process observation mental state dynamics mental statesincluding emotions cognitive statesare static rather transitions one state another systematic predictable drawing prior cognitive science hypothesize transition dynamics may shape conceptual structure people learn apply mental states across nine behavioral experiments n 1439 tested whether transition probabilities mental states causally shape peoples conceptual judgments states study found observing frequent transitions mental states caused people judge conceptually similar computational modeling indicated people translated mental state dynamics concepts embedding states points within geometric space closer two states within space greater likelihood transitions three neural network experiments trained artificial neural networks predict real human mental state dynamics networks spontaneously learned conceptual dimensions people use understand mental states together results indicate mental state dynamicsand goal predicting themshape structure mental state concepts psycinfo database record c 2023 apa rights reserved