Negation in spatial reasoning - A computational approach

In recent years a lot of research has been done in order to determine factors of complexity in spatial relational reasoning, like the number of models, the wording of conclusion or the influence of relational complexity. But research so far focused on affirmative statements only, i. e. negated expressions have not yet been investigated. In spatial reasoning and in human machine interaction, however, negation plays a fundamental role. Central questions are: How are negated statements represented? What happens in multiple-model cases? Which effects have different reference frames? We conducted three experiments to show that humans (i) negate a relation by using the opposite relation, (ii) construct preferred mental models and use an economic principle, and (iii) have more difficulties in reasoning with negated relations. The goal is to extend our cognitive and computational model - the SRM.