This chapter first explains what intuitive theories are, how they can be modeled as
probabilistic, generative programs, and how intuitive theories support various cognitive …

How do people make causal judgments about physical events? We introduce the
counterfactual simulation model (CSM) which predicts causal judgments in physical settings …

From building towers to picking an orange from a stack of fruit, assessing support is critical
for successfully interacting with the physical world. But how do people determine whether …

Many aspects of our physical environment are hidden. For example, it is hard to estimate
how heavy an object is from visual observation alone. In this paper we examine how people …

A single panel of a comic book can say a lot: it can depict not only where the characters
currently are, but also their motions, their motivations, their emotions, and what they might do …

In this paper, we investigate how people use mental simulations: do people vary the number
of simulations that they run in order to optimally balance speed and accuracy? We combined …

The amount of new information is constantly increasing, faster than our ability to fully
interpret and utilize it to improve human experiences. Addressing this asymmetry requires …

What shape do people's mental models take? We hypothesize that people build causal
models that are suited to the task at hand. These models abstract away information to …

We introduce a novel experimental paradigm for studying multi-modal integration in causal
inference. Our experiments feature a physically realistic Plinko machine in which a ball is …

Human adults can figure out what happened by combining evidence from different sensory
modalities, such as vision and sound. How does the ability to integrate multi-modal …