Negation in Spatial Reasoning

How do we reason about spatial descriptions? In recent years a lot of research has been investigated in order to determine factors of complexity in spatial relational reasoning. Several factors like the number of models, the wording of conclusion or relational complexity have been determined. Any of these factors effected reasoning. But the literature focused solemnly on positive premises. Negated expressions like “The fork is not to the right of the cup” had not been investigated. Since in everyday spatial reasoning the role of negation is eminent, we study negated spatial relations from a formal and psychological perspective. Central questions are: How are negated statements represented? If there are various models consistent with the set of premises, which of these is constructed initially? Is there an effect for different reference frames? We conducted three experiments for investigating these research questions. We will show that humans (i) negate a relation by using the oppo...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: KI
• Authors: Stefan Schleipen, Marco Ragni, Thomas Fangmeier
• Keywords: Factors Effected Reasoning, KI 2007, Negated, Spatial Relational Reasoning