Complexity in Spatial Reasoning
Thomas Fangmeier, Markus Knauff, Marco Ragni, Lara Webber · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · 2006
We introduce a unified approach to account for the problems people have in spatial reasoning. This approach combines two theories: the mental model theory which aims to explain the deduction process, and the relational complexity theory which explains the processing complexity of the spatial relations needed in order to conceptualize the reasoning problem. We propose that a combination of these two theories can account for some of various errors found in spatial reasoning. We present two experiments in which we demonstrate that participants use the principle of first free fit to construct preferred mental models. We then formally implement these findings in the Spatial Reasoning by Models computational framework.