Generating and evaluating explanations is spontaneous, ubiquitous and fundamental to our
sense of understanding. Recent evidence suggests that in the course of an individual's …

Inductive inference allows humans to make powerful generalizations from sparse data when
learning about word meanings, unobserved properties, causal relationships, and many …

The impressive recent performance of large language models has led many to wonder to
what extent they can serve as models of general intelligence or are similar to human …

Over recent years, the psychology of concepts has been rejuvenated by new work on
prototypes, inventive ideas on causal cognition, the development of neo-empiricist theories …

Psychological essentialism is the idea that certain categories, such as 'lion'or 'female', have
an underlying reality that cannot be observed directly. Where does this idea come from …

Human beings are active agents who can think. To understand how thought serves action
requires understanding how people conceive of the relation between cause and effect …

This article describes cross-cultural and developmental research on folk biology: that is, the
study of how people conceptualize living kinds. The combination of a conceptual module for …

Inductive reasoning entails using existing knowledge or observations to make predictions
about novel cases. We review recent findings in research on category‐based induction as …

Everyday inductive inferences are often guided by rich background knowledge. Formal
models of induction should aim to incorporate this knowledge and should explain how …

What events trigger causal explanatory reasoning in young children? Children's
explanations could be triggered by either consistent events (suggesting that explanations …