The REI (Exploratory Research and Innovation) area of research works in close collaboration with the P-A-R-I-S (Probability, Assessment, Reasoning and Inferences Studies) group, which constitutes a topic of the CHArt (Human and Artificial Cognition) laboratory.
This area of research has the objective of carrying out cognitive psychology work that focuses on uncertain reasoning: defeasible inference (Ragni, Eichhorn, Bock, Kern-Isberner, and Ping Ping Tse, 2017); induction (Kemp and Jern, 2013); and abduction (Schurz, 2007, 2016). These inferences underlie ordinary cognition, and allow individuals to form and revise their beliefs in situations where information is uncertain, vague, or contradictory (for a typology of the forms of uncertainty see Bradley and Drechsler, 2013 as well as Motro and Smets, 1997). The REI approach focuses on reasoning made at its highest degree of abstraction as well as its use in more specific contexts such as in situations involving causality. Uncertain inferences that are based on cause and effect relationships and that are notably involved in the construction, selection, or validation of explanation (Lombrozo, 2012; Lombrozo and Gwynne, 2014) also constitute an important focus within this area of research.