@proceedings{131921,
  author = {Elizabeth Kon and Tania Lombrozo},
  editor = { and  and  and },
  title = {Seeking ideal explanations in a non-ideal world},
  abstract = {<p>Research has found that when children or adults attempt to explain novel observations in the course of learning, they are more likely to discover patterns that support ideal explanations: explanations that are maximally simple and broad. However, not all learning contexts support such explanations. Can explaining facilitate discovery nonetheless? We present a study in which participants were tasked with discovering a rule governing the classification of items, where the items were consistent two non-ideal rules: one correctly classified 66\% of cases, the other 83\%. We find that when there is no ideal rule to be discovered (i.e., no 100\% rule), participants prompted to explain are better than control participants at discovering the best available rule (i.e., the 83\% rule). This supports the idea that seeking ideal explanations can be beneficial in a non-ideal world because the pursuit of an ideal explanation can facilitate the discovery of imperfect patterns along the way.</p>
},
  year = {2018},
  journal = {Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society},
  pages = {1939-1944},
  publisher = {Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society},
  language = {eng},
}