Qualitative Spatial Reasoning: A Cognitive and Computational Approach

In recent years a lot of psychological research efforts have been made in analyzing human spatial reasoning. Psychologists have implicitly used few spatial cognitive models, i.e. models of how humans conceptualize spatial information and reason about it. But only little effort has been put into the task of identifying from an algorithmic point of view the control mechanism and complexity involved in spatial relational reasoning. In this paper we extend the SRM model (Ragni, Knauff, & Nebel, 2005; Ragni & Steffenhagen, 2007) by new specifications and formalization of Baddeleys Working memory model. By the resulting model CROS we are able to explain a number of new psychological effects of spatial representation and reasoning by the number of mental operations involved in solving these tasks. The discussion includes consequences of the formalization for the role of the central executive in spatial relational reasoning.