Knowledge Representation in Everyday Cognition and Behavior

I discuss how insights from artificial intelligence can be used to build computational cognitive models with realistic knowledge representations about the world. In addition to specifying the information processing mechanisms people use to form beliefs and preferences, these models also represent the information on which these mechanisms operate. Subsequently, they are able to deliberate over and respond to naturalistic judgment, decision making, and reasoning problems, and moreover, mimic human responses to these problems. I demonstrate the applicability of these models to domains as diverse as memory retrieval, semantic cognition, inductive reasoning, social cognition, political judgment, risk perception, health judgment, personality research, and consumer behavior. These models shed light on how people think and decide in their everyday lives, and illustrate a powerful new approach to predicting real-world behavior.