My research was supported by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program ([FP7/2007-2013] under a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship for Career Development, contract number N° 220686 – DBR (Diagram-based Reasoning).
Visual/spatial displays of different kinds, diagrams being among them, are massively used in many reasoning processes and in the very practice of science; however, there is in general no consensus about the reasons why a diagram can be successfully used, and whether it represents only an auxiliary aid for reasoning or is something more fundamental for it. It is not clear, for instance, whether there is a principled distinction between graphic and linguistic systems [see Shimojima, A., “The Graphic-Linguistic Distinction”, Artificial Intelligence Review, 15, 2001: 5 – 27.]. Moreover, the methodology is still in its infancy: as it was for the properties of language at the beginning of its cognitive study, the fundamental properties of diagrams and figures are most of the times taken for granted, and thus neither acknowledged nor investigated in depth [see Chomsky, N. (2000), New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)].
For these reasons, an investigation into the capacity of diagrams to convey information and supporting reasoning and inferences, which is the aim of the present project, is necessary for a general evaluation of the tools which are available for thought. The long-term research target is the in-depth treatment of the different tools we make use of in reasoning and their possible interactions. Unveiling the advantages and disadvantages of the use of each of them is important, especially in view of the very fast developing of new technologies that support reasoning and communication.
The objectives of the project are the following:
- the evaluation of the cognitive advantages in the use of diagrams;
- a classification of diagrams.
The background assumption is that there is a cognitive advantage in using a diagram in a number of reasoning and communication tasks, as opposed to the idea that diagrams only represent an auxiliary aid for reasoning processes. This assumption is modulated as follows:
- the cognitive advantage of using diagrams is not only determined by the fact that diagrams are just ‘more visual’ than linguistic sentences;
- diagrams represent a cognitive advantage not in principle, but depending on the task in question.
The cognitive study into the use of diagrams is thus combined with a pragmatic
study of the way diagrams are actually used, thereby side-stepping the uninformative
dichotomy visual vs. non visual.
