smart people can be so stupid (pp. 124-158). New Haven, CT: Yale

The author proposes that both the internalized representations of the world (and the self) and the notions used for interpreting these schema tend to be resistant to change, even if observations contradict these notions. Applying Piaget’s concepts of assimilation and accommodation as narrowly defined and re-interpreted in terms of Theory theory both the process by which faulty thinking is maintained and the condition accounting for a change in underlying schema are discussed. The importance of confusion in the process of modifying old notions that cause faulty thinking is stressed, and a clinical example is given to illustrate this. Normal Mental Processing 3

Previous work showed that people‟s causal judgments are modeled better as estimates of the probability that a causal relationship exists (a qualitative inference) than as estimates of the strength of that relationship (a quantitative inference). Here, using a novel task, we present experimental evidence in support of the importance of qualitative causal inference. Our findings cannot be explained through the use of parameter estimation and related quantitative inference. These findings suggest the role of qualitative inference in causal reasoning has been understudied despite its unique role in cognition. Further, we suggest these findings open interesting questions about the role of qualitative inference in many domains.