Theorizing (Model Building)

(René Magritte)

We are interested in studying how humans perceive causality, whether, why and when they think about "models" behind observed (uncertain) outcomes which, if only partially true, may help them in decision making. Particularly pressing is the question how humans actually manage to form models ("theorize") about their environment, because the complexity (of this environment) makes it basically impossible to consider all possibilities, and hence, somehow humans have to limit their attention to a few reasonable models. This work is in collaboration with John O'Doherty's team.