Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This paper discusses evidence from thinking aloud case studies indicating that part of the knowledge used by expert problem solvers consists of concrete physical intuitions rather than abstract verbal principles or equations. One purpose of the paper is to provide empirical documentation of behaviors such as spontaneous references to using intuition, depictive hand motions, and dynamic imagery reports. Although the role of imagery in lower level tasks is becoming more accepted, we currently lack sufficient empirical evidence for its use in higher level thinking. In order to account for cases where subjects appear to be "running a simulation" of an event on the basis of a physical intuition, a model is presented in which a somewhat general and permanent perceptual motor schema controls a more specific and temporary image of a situation. This process is termed "imagistic simulation". The imagery can be kinesthetic as well as visual, and dynamic rather than static, suggesting the involvement of the motor system. Although rules for making inferences from networks of causal relations have been studied, we lack models which analyze the nature of mental simulations underlying a single causal relationship. Such physical intuitions and simulations may provide basic building blocks for constructing visualizable models in science.