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Seeking Ideal Explanations in a Non-Ideal World

Abstract

Research has found that when children or adults attemptto explain novel observations in the course of learning,they are more likely to discover patterns that support idealexplanations: explanations that are maximally simple andbroad. However, not all learning contexts support suchexplanations. Can explaining facilitate discoverynonetheless? We present a study in which participantswere tasked with discovering a rule governing theclassification of items, where the items were consistenttwo non-ideal rules: one correctly classified 66% of cases,the other 83%. We find that when there is no ideal rule tobe discovered (i.e., no 100% rule), participants promptedto explain are better than control participants atdiscovering the best available rule (i.e., the 83% rule).This supports the idea that seeking ideal explanations canbe beneficial in a non-ideal world because the pursuit ofan ideal explanation can facilitate the discovery ofimperfect patterns along the way.

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