Markus Knauff

Markus Knauff (* 1964 ) is a German psychologist and cognitive scientist . Since 2008 he has been Professor of General Psychology and Cognitive Research at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen .

Life

Markus Knauff received his diploma in psychology from the Ruhr University Bochum in 1991. In 1996 he received his doctorate under Gerhard Strube in the department of cognitive science at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg . From 1999 to 2000 he was on a postdoctoral fellowship from the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the Psychology Department of Princeton University (USA), where he worked with the well-known thought psychologist Philip Johnson-Laird . After his return he completed his habilitation in 2002 at the University of Freiburg in the subjects of psychology and cognitive science. This was followed by a substitute professorship at the University of Oldenburg . In 2003 he was awarded a Heisenberg grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) . From 2003 to 2006 he was working group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen. Since 2006 he has been a professor at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen , where he holds the chair for general psychology and cognitive research. From 2010 to 2013 he was Dean of the Department of Psychology and Sports Science at the University of Giessen.

Knauff was visiting professor at the Universidad de La Laguna in Spain and several times at the University of California, Santa Barbara . From 2012 to 2018 he was the speaker of the DFG-funded priority program “ New Frameworks of Rationality ” (SPP1516), in which 14 research groups from different countries explore the nature of human rationality.

Knauff is co-editor of the journal Cognitive Science and a member of the Governing Board of the international Cognitive Science Society. He was president of the German Society for Cognitive Science .

Scientific Research

One focus of his research is "higher cognitive performance", in particular the development and experimental testing of theories of human thinking and problem solving. Knauff's research deals with the cognitive foundations of human rationality, especially with logical and spatial thinking and problem solving.

Knauff has developed a theory of “preferred mental models” and tested it experimentally with his colleagues. The theory is that people think by imagining what might be the case if certain statements were true. However, many statements are ambiguous, so they allow many possible mental models or interpretations. The theory of preferred mental models explains why people usually only consider one preferred model, while other interpretations are overlooked. This leads to systematic errors in thinking and deviations from what can be called rational.

Knauff is also researching the role of descriptive ideas in thinking. In particular, he criticizes the widespread view that pictorial representation is generally useful for thinking. Knauff was able to show in experiments that pictorial ideas that are processed in visual brain regions can even hinder thinking, as they distract from the actually relevant information. This takes additional time and leads to incorrect conclusions. Knauff developed the space-to-reason theory based on the work on the role of descriptive ideas and on preferred mental models.

Knauff has also worked on thinking with uncertain information, changing beliefs, and withdrawing conclusions when thinking. Together with his colleagues, he has also applied this work to thinking with emotional, economic and legal content.

An experimental study in 2014 caused discussion in which Knauff described the use of LaTeX in comparison to Microsoft Word to create scientific texts as often irrational. The study was discussed in Nature and heavily attacked by LaTeX users.

Publications (selection)

• Space to Reason. A Spatial Theory of Human Thought. MIT Press, Cambridge MA et al. 2013, ISBN 978-0-262-01865-4 .
• as editor with Natalie Sebanz, Michael Pauen and Ipke Wachsmuth : Cooperative minds social interaction and group Dynamics. 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013), Berlin, Germany, 31 July – 3 August 2013 (= Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. 35). 5 volumes. Cognitive Science Society, Austin TX 2013, ISBN 978-1-62993-081-7 ( online ).
• with Marco Ragni: A theory and a computational model of spatial reasoning with preferred mental models. In: Psychological Review. Vol. 120, No. 3, 2013, 561-588, doi : 10.1037 / a0032460 .
• with Thomas Fangmeier, Christian C. Ruff and Philip N. Johnson-Laird : Reasoning, models, and images: Behavioral measures and cortical activity. In: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Vol. 15, No. 4, 2003, pp. 559-573, doi : 10.1162 / 089892903321662949 .
• with Philip N. Johnson-Laird: Visual imagery can impede reasoning. In: Memory & Cognition. Vol. 30, No. 3, 2002, 363-371, doi : 10.3758 / BF03194937 .

Web links

• Homepage of Markus Knauff on the website of the Justus Liebig University Giessen

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Prof. Dr. Markus Knauff. Retrieved November 7, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Markus Knauf: Curriculum Vitae of Prof. Dr. Markus Knauff. In: JLU. October 1, 2019, accessed November 7, 2019 . 
3. ^ SPP1516: New Frameworks of Rationality. Retrieved November 7, 2019 . 
4. ^ Cognitive Science Society: Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society. ( Memento of the original from December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Cognitive Science Society website, accessed December 21, 2015 
5. ^ Society for Cognitive Science eV: Board of Directors. Website of the Society for Cognitive Science, accessed December 21, 2015.
6. ↑ Markus Knauff, Jelica Nejasmic: An Efficiency Comparison of Document Preparation System Used in Academic Research and Development. In: PLoS ONE 9 (12): e115069, 2014.
7. ↑ Chris Woolston: Word processing was flares up on social media. In Nature , Volume 517, Issue 7533, January 5, 2015.