Naïve physics

Naïve physics is people’s intuitive, often inaccurate understanding of how physical objects and forces behave. It is studied in psychology and artificial intelligence as a system of everyday expectations about the physical world.

Intuitive physics: Informal knowledge and expectations about how physical systems behave, acquired through experience rather than formal instruction. Naïve physics is the everyday, psychologically studied form of this broader kind of knowledge.
Impetus theory: An intuitive account in which a moving object carries an internal force that sustains its motion. It captures a common mistaken alternative to inertia in naïve reasoning about motion.
Qualitative physics: The representation and reasoning about physical systems using qualitative relations rather than precise numerical quantities. Naïve physics motivates computational models that reason without complete measurements.
David McCloskey: A cognitive psychologist known for research on intuitive beliefs about motion and mechanics. His studies documented systematic errors in people’s predictions of physical motion.
Mental model: An internal representation of a system used to explain its behavior and anticipate outcomes. People rely on simplified mental models when reasoning about physical events.
Inertia: The tendency of an object to maintain its state of rest or uniform straight-line motion unless acted on by a net force. People often expect motion to require a continuing push, contrary to the principle of inertia.
Qualitative reasoning: Reasoning about how variables change using categories such as increasing, decreasing, or remaining constant. It offers AI a way to model commonsense physical predictions when exact values are unavailable.
Michael McCloskey: A cognitive psychologist whose work examined how people reason about elementary physics. His research helped establish naïve mechanics as an experimentally studied form of knowledge.
Object permanence: The understanding that objects continue to exist when they are hidden from view. Expectations about hidden objects form an early foundation for intuitive physical reasoning.
Gravity: The attraction between masses, described in modern physics by general relativity and approximated near Earth by Newtonian mechanics. Everyday falling judgments reveal how intuitive gravity differs from formal accounts.

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