Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Scientific reasoning includes deciding whether information is relevant to explaining an event. In some cases, seeinginformation as relevant requires having a background theory or explanation that can make sense of the information. Collegestudents were shown a possible explanation for an event, along with two pieces of possibly relevant information (Info1 andInfo2), and one of two possible alternative explanations (Alt1 or Alt2). Info1 was seen as more relevant when Alt1 rather thanAlt2 was presented; Info2 was seen as more relevant when Alt2 rather than Alt1 was presented. In addition, relevance ratingsof the information increased as did initial ratings of the Alternative. People from different backgrounds might bring with themdifferent alternative theories that can hinder the understanding of why some information is relevant and other information not. Inaddition, finding the initial alternative compelling might enable people to better assess the relevance of additional information.