Harry Potter and the sorcerer's scope: latent scope biases in explanatory reasoning.

What makes a good explanation? We examine the function of latent scope, i.e., the number of unobserved phenomena that an explanation can account for. We show that individuals prefer narrow latent scope explanations-those that account for fewer unobserved effects-to broader explanations. In Experimen...

Full description

Bibliographic Details

Published in:	Memory & Cognition Vol. 39; no. 3; pp. 527 - 536
Main Authors:	Khemlani, Sangeet, Sussman, Abigail, Oppenheimer, Daniel
Format:	Article
Published:	Springer Nature Apr2011
Subjects:	Analysis of variance Cognition Decision making Individuality Literature Problem solving Psycholinguistics Semantics Fantasy (Psychology) Human information processing Research funding Statistics Data analysis
Online Access:	View this record in EBSCOhost