13 papers · ranked by Valyu relevance
Hope Kean, Alexander Fung, Paris Jaggers, Jason Chen + 6 more
Humans are endowed with a powerful capacity for both inductive and deductive logical thought: we easily form generalizations based on a few examples and draw conclusions from known premises. Humans also arguably have the most sophisticated communication system in the animal kingdom: natural language allows us to…
Hope Kean, Alexander Fung, Paris Jaggers, Jason Chen + 6 more
Humans are endowed with a powerful capacity for both inductive and deductive logical thought: we easily form generalizations based on a few examples and draw conclusions from known premises. Humans also arguably have the most sophisticated communication system in the animal kingdom: natural language allows us to…
Isaac R. Christian, Samuel A. Nastase
Humans spend time contemplating the minds of others. But this ability is not limited to external agents – we also turn the lens for reading minds inward, reflecting on our own thoughts, emotions, and sense of self. Some processes involved in reasoning about minds may rely on shared mechanisms, while others may be…
Alexander V. Lebedev, Jonna Nilsson, Martin Lövdén
Researchers have proposed that solving complex reasoning problems, a key indicator of fluid intelligence, involves the same cognitive processes as solving working memory tasks. This proposal is supported by an overlap of the functional brain activations associated with the two types of tasks and by high correlations…
Maryam Ziaei, Mohammad Reza Bonyadi, David Reutens
Prior knowledge and beliefs influence our reasoning in daily life and may lead us to draw unwarranted conclusions with undesirable consequences. The underlying neural correlates of the interaction between belief and logic, prior to making logical decisions, are largely unknown. In this study, we aimed to identify brain…
Hope Kean, Alexander Fung, RT Pramod, Jessica Chomik-Morales + 2 more
The ability to reason about the physical world is a critical tool in the human cognitive toolbox, but the nature of the representations that mediate physical reasoning remains debated. Here, we use fMRI to illuminate this question by investigating the relationship between the physical-reasoning system and two…
Dániel Rivas-Blanco, Marco Vasconcelos, Friederike Range, Alex Kacelnik + 1 more
We critically examine theoretical and experimental evidence that animals’ reason by exclusion, focusing on a widespread protocol known as the 2-Cups Task. We test the hypothesis that subjects solve inference by exclusion tasks by responding independently to two options, without implementing complex reasoning, as…
Leonidas A. A. Doumas, Guillermo Puebla, Andrea E. Martin
How a system represents information tightly constrains the kinds of problems it can solve. Humans routinely solve problems that appear to require structured representations of stimulus properties and relations. Answering the question of how we acquire these representations has central importance in an account of human…
Maryam Ziaei, Mohammad Reza Bonyadi, David C. Reutens
In logical reasoning, difficulties in inhibition of currently-held beliefs may lead to unwarranted conclusions, known as belief bias. Aging is associated with difficulties in inhibitory control, which may lead to deficits in inhibition of currently-held beliefs. No study to date, however, has investigated the…
Dániel Rivas-Blanco, Marco Vasconcelos, Friederike Range, Alex Kacelnik + 1 more
Is human language necessary for logical reasoning? Multiple studies address this by showing animals a bait hidden in either of two inverted cups, briefly lifting one exposing its content and then letting subjects choose. Consistent preference for the baited container is interpreted as evidence of inferential reasoning…
Shuchen Liu, Seda Karakose-Akbiyik, Alfonso Caramazza, Filipa Dourado Sotero + 2 more
Many everyday tasks, from chopping vegetables to catching a ball, require understanding both how objects respond to physical forces and how to use them effectively. These capacities, tool use and physical reasoning, are often assumed to rely on shared cognitive and neural mechanisms. At some level, this correspondence…
Jianmin Zeng, Dinglan Tang, Jia Yu, Qinglin Zhang + 1 more
Intuition and deliberation are two strategies for problem-solving and decision-making. It is commonly believed that deliberation requires more effort than intuition. However, to date, neural evidence approving or disapproving this point is scarce. To explore this issue, we asked participants to play two well-matched…
Sabrina Golonka, Andrew D Wilson
Mainstream cognitive science and neuroscience both rely heavily on the notion of representation in order to explain the full range of our behavioral repertoire. The relevant feature of representation is its ability to designate (stand in for) spatially or temporally distant properties, When we organize our behavior…