Incremental Model Construction: Eye-movements Reflect Mental Representations and Operations – Even If There Is Nothing to Look At

In the following we present a cognitive model and a visual world experiment to test a fundamental hypothesis derived from the mental model approach: the assumption that special relational reasoning relies on a mental model manipulation device responsible for model construction, inspection and variation. We will provide evidence for a direct linking hypothesis of eye-movements, demonstrating that the eye reflects the fundamental operations of model construction, even if there are no objects to look at.