Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Explanation reconstruction performs a crucial role not only inthe progress of science but also in educational practices anddaily activities, including the comprehension of phenomena.In this study, we conducted experiments to examine the factorsthat facilitate shifts in explanations. We focused on the tran-sition of attention on a key fact that contradicts an initial ex-planation and has a central role in its reconstruction. We useda short story as an experimental material in which participantsfirst constructed an initial explanation and then reconstructedit. In the experiment, we controlled the time of presentationof the key fact (bottom-up condition), reflective thinking (top-down condition), and the two together (bidirectional condition)to facilitate understanding of the explanatory shift. The experi-mental results are summarized as follows. First, when the priorexplanation was rejected, attention to the key fact was inhibitedalthough a new explanation was required. Second, the success-ful group increased their attention on the key fact just beforethe explanatory shift. Third, protection of the preceding expla-nation with unobserved facts was inhibited by guiding the par-ticipants ’attention toward the key fact. Finally, although theinitial explanation was not completely shifted, a explanatorypre-shift was achieved by activating reflective thinking withattention to the key fact.