Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

When reasoners explain everyday patterns and observations,they tend to generate explanations based on inherent propertiesof the observations (Cimpian & Salomon, 2014). Cimpian(2015) and his colleagues hypothesized that inherent propertiespermit rapid explanation, but the mechanism by whichreasoners rapidly build explanations remains unclear. Anygiven concept may relate to innumerable inherent properties,and no theory explains how reasoners avoid protractedsearches through semantic memory. Prasada and colleagues(2013) describe a novel conceptual framework thatdistinguishes between principled and statistical inherentproperties. Here, we argue that the framework can resolve thepredicted link between rapid explanation and the inherencebias. Two studies provide evidence that people systematicallyprefer principled inherent explanations. The finding allows foran integrated, mechanistic account of how reasoners generateexplanations in which a preference for inherent explanationsemerges from a preference for principled connections.