Neural Correlates of Belief-Laden Reasoning during Premise Processing: An Event-Related Potential Study

Abstract

In this study, electrophysiological correlates of belief-laden reasoning were investigated. As subjects, trained participants were required to draw a logical conclusion after being exposed to 4 conditional arguments: the inhibitory content of modus tollens (ICMT), facilitatory content of modus tollens (FCMT), inhibitory content of denial of the antecedent (ICDA) and facilitatory content of denial of the antecedent (FCDA). Event-related potentials were employed to record the processing of minor premises. The results show that in comparison with FCMT, a greater negativity in the ICMT developed during both the 400- to 600- and the 800- to 1,600-ms time windows. A greater anterior cingulate cortex activity observed in the 800- to 1,600-ms time window in ICMT could reflect a detection of the conflict between empirical beliefs and logical rules. However, the components elicited by ICDA and FCDA were not significantly different. The results indicate that logical training influenced MT and DA forms of belief-laden reasoning in different ways and different strategies were likely adopted in the inference processes.

At the core of reasoning: Dissociating deductive and non‐deductive load

“…First, although our behavioral results replicate the classic differential performance across modus ponens and modus tollens type inferences, accuracy in the modus tollens type inferences was higher than typically reported in classic studies (i.e., 87% in our work vs. 63% in Taplin, 1971; 62% in Wildman & Fletcher, 1977). Nonetheless, our accuracy rates are in line with a number of behavioral and neuroimaging reports (e.g., 94% in Prado et al , 84% in Luo, Yang, Du, & Zhang, ; between 80% and 88% in Bloomfield & Rips ; 79% in Knauff et al, ; 78% in Trippas, Thompson, & Handley, ; 75% in Evans, 1977; and above 90% in the Wason Selection Task as implemented in Li, Zhang, Luo, Qiu, & Liu, , Qiu et al, , Liu et al, ) as well as developmental work showing that by age 16 accuracy rates for modus tollens range between 78% and 87% (Daniel et al, 2006). We do stress, however, that although our participants did not undergo any overt training (e.g., training to criterion; see for example Reverberi et al, ) and reported no formal training in logic, our procedure selected high‐performance individuals in the sense that they had to meet a 60% accuracy criterion across each of the four conditions (complex/simple, deductive/non‐deductive).…”

Common and distinct brain responses to detecting top‐down and bottom‐up conflicts underlying numerical inductive reasoning

“…In addition, the relational mismatch condition triggered a smaller frontal LNC than the other two conditions. The relational mismatch effect on the LNC was analogous to the belief‐logic conflict effect found in conditional reasoning, in which the late negativity was responsible for conflict detection and cognitive control (Luo, Yang, Du, & Zhang, ; Qiu et al, ). The LNC effect was also observed to be elicited by the anticipated information in mental division conditions in contrast to memory problems (Rösler & Heil, ; Ruchkin, Johnson, Mahaffey, & Sutton, ).…”

Cognitive control in belief‐laden reasoning during conclusion processing: An ERP study

“…Most recently, neuroscientific methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), and event‐related potentials (ERPs) have demonstrated the value of utilizing new measures to examine the belief‐bias effect (Goel & Dolan, 2003; Luo, Yang, Du, & Zhang, 2011; Luo et al., 2008; Tsujii, Masuda, Akiyama, & Watanabe, 2010; Tsujii & Watanabe, 2010). This accumulating neuroscientific evidence has generally shown support for dual‐process theories (see, e.g., De Neys, Moyens, & Vansteenwegen, 2010) and has added weight to the argument that belief bias is difficult to explain with a unitary cognitive process (but see Dube, Rotello, & Heit, 2010 for a challenge to dual‐process theory from a single‐process perspective).…”

“…Previous studies (Luo et al., 2008, 2011) have provided evidence for electrophysiological correlates of belief‐bias effect during premise processing. For example, a greater negativity was associated with the detection of conflict between empirical beliefs and logical rules in conditional reasoning (Luo et al., 2011). Similarly, it has been postulated that an increased N2 in conditional reasoning is related to perceptual conflict (Bonnefond & Van der Henst, 2009; Prado, Kaliuzhna, Cheylus, & Noveck, 2008).…”