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Explanation and understanding

The study of explanation, while related to intuitive theories, concepts, and mental models, offers important new perspectives on high-level thought. Explanations sort themselves into several distinct types corresponding to patterns of causation, content domains, and explanatory stances, all of which...

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Published in:	Annual review of psychology 2006-01, Vol.57 (1), p.227-254
Main Author:	KEIL, Frank C
Format:	Article
Language:	English
Subjects:	Affect Biological and medical sciences Cognition Cognition & reasoning Cognition. Intelligence Culture Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology Humans Illusions Intuition Logic Psychological Theory Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry Psychology. Psychophysiology Reasoning. Problem solving Science Studies Verbal Behavior
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creator	KEIL, Frank C
description	The study of explanation, while related to intuitive theories, concepts, and mental models, offers important new perspectives on high-level thought. Explanations sort themselves into several distinct types corresponding to patterns of causation, content domains, and explanatory stances, all of which have cognitive consequences. Although explanations are necessarily incomplete--often dramatically so in laypeople--those gaps are difficult to discern. Despite such gaps and the failure to recognize them fully, people do have skeletal explanatory senses, often implicit, of the causal structure of the world. They further leverage those skeletal understandings by knowing how to access additional explanatory knowledge in other minds and by being particularly adept at using situational support to build explanations on the fly in real time. Across development and cultures, there are differences in preferred explanatory schemes, but rarely are any kinds of schemes completely unavailable to a group.
doi_str_mv	10.1146/annurev.psych.57.102904.190100
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source	International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS); Annual Reviews; Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA)
subjects	Affect Biological and medical sciences Cognition Cognition & reasoning Cognition. Intelligence Culture Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology Humans Illusions Intuition Logic Psychological Theory Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry Psychology. Psychophysiology Reasoning. Problem solving Science Studies Verbal Behavior
title	Explanation and understanding
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