Cognitive Model of Confirmation Bias Effects

The model RecMap for high-level vision, based on the DUAL architecture, is founded on the assumption that analogy-making lies at the core of human cognition. According to the model, vision is a constructive process of continuous generation and verification of hypotheses. However, the same principle can be applied to the domain of social cognition to account for various observed effects such as confirmation bias tendency of people to retrieve, to search, and to interpret information in a biased way, trying to verify but not to falsify their current hypotheses. The presented study proposes an account of the confirmation bias effect as an emergent result of the basic mechanisms involved on other aspects of cognition such as high level vision. A simulation study with RecMap model is provided.