UEcho: A Model of Uncertainty Management in Human Abductive Reasoning

This paper explores the uncertainty aspects of human abdu c- tive reasoning. Echo, a model of abduction based on the Th e- ory of Explanatory Coherence (Thagard, 1992), captures many aspects of human abductive reasoning, but fails to su f- ficiently manage the uncertainty in abduction. In particular, Echo does not handle belief acquisition and dynamic belief revision, two essential components of human abductive re a- soning. We propose a modified Echo model (UEcho), in which we add a learning mechanism for belief acquisition and a dynamic processing mechanism for belief revision. To evaluate the model, we report an empirical study in which base rate learning serves as a testbed for belief acquisition and the order effect serves as a testbed for belief r evision.

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