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Relational reasoning is a complex form of human cognition involving the evaluation of relations between mental representations of information. Prior studies have modified stimulus properties of relational reasoning problems and examined differences in difficulty between different problem types. While subsets of these stimulus properties have been addressed in separate studies, there has not been a comprehensive study, to our knowledge, which investigates all of these properties in the same set of stimuli. This investigative gap has resulted in different findings across studies which vary in task design, making it challenging to determine what stimulus properties make relational reasoning—and the putative formation of mental models underlying reasoning—difficult. In this article, we present the Multidimensional Relational Reasoning Task (MRRT), a task which systematically varied an array of stimulus properties within a single set of relational reasoning problems. Using a mixed-effects framework, we demonstrate that reasoning problems containing a greater number of the premises as well as multidimensional relations led to greater task difficulty. The MRRT has been made publicly available for use in future research, along with normative data regarding the relative difficulty of each problem.
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Mental models use common neural spatial structure for spatial and abstract content
Abstract Mental models provide a cognitive framework allowing for spatially organizing information while reasoning about the world. However, transitive reasoning studies often rely on perception of stimuli that contain visible spatial features, allowing the possibility that associated neural representations are specific to inherently spatial content. Here, we test the hypothesis that neural representations of mental models generated through transitive reasoning rely on a frontoparietal network irrespective of the spatial nature of the stimulus content. Content within three models ranges from expressly visuospatial to abstract. All mental models participants generated were based on inferred relationships never directly observed. Here, using multivariate representational similarity analysis, we show that patterns representative of mental models were revealed in both superior parietal lobule and anterior prefrontal cortex and converged across stimulus types. These results support the conclusion that, independent of content, transitive reasoning using mental models relies on neural mechanisms associated with spatial cognition.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1661088
- PAR ID:
- 10154173
- Publisher / Repository:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Communications Biology
- Volume:
- 3
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2399-3642
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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