Qualitative representations : how people reason and learn about the continuous world / Kenneth D. Forbus.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 377-415) and index.

Introduction and preliminaries -- Introduction -- Representation -- Reasoning -- Analogy -- Dynamics -- Quantity -- Relationships between quantities -- Qualitative process theory -- Examples using QP theory -- Causality -- Qualitative simulation and reasoning about change -- Modeling -- Analogy in dynamics -- Dynamics in language -- Space -- Qualitative spatial reasoning: a theoretical framework -- Qualitative spatial calculi -- Understanding sketches and diagrams -- Learning and reasoning -- Learning and conceptual change -- Commonsense reasoning -- Expert reasoning -- Summary and new directions -- Summary -- New directions -- Bibliography -- Notes -- Index.

An argument that qualitative representations--symbolic representations that carve continuous phenomena into meaningful units--are central to human cognition.