Citation

Hegarty M. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn. 1992; 18(5): 1084-1102.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara 93106.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1992, American Psychological Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

1402712

Abstract

Reaction-time and eye-fixation data are analyzed to investigate how people infer the kinematics of simple mechanical systems (pulley systems) from diagrams showing their static configuration. It is proposed that this mental animation process involves decomposing the representation of a pulley system into smaller units corresponding to the machine components and animating these components in a sequence corresponding to the causal sequence of events in the machine's operation. Although it is possible for people to make inferences against the chain of causality in the machine, these inferences are more difficult, and people have a preference for inferences in the direction of causality. The mental animation process reflects both capacity limitations and limitations of mechanical knowledge.

Language: en