Liang Peipeng, Jia Xiuqin, Taatgen Niels A, Zhong Ning, Li Kuncheng
Department of Radiology, Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China; Beijing Key Lab of Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Brain Informatics, Beijing, China; Key Laboratory for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Ministry of Education, China.
Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Engineering, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2014 Aug;93(2):253-60. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2014.05.006. Epub 2014 May 16.
Neural correlate of human inductive reasoning process is still unclear. Number series and letter series completion are two typical inductive reasoning tasks, and with a common core component of rule induction. Previous studies have demonstrated that different strategies are adopted in number series and letter series completion tasks; even the underlying rules are identical. In the present study, we examined cortical activation as a function of two different reasoning strategies for solving series completion tasks. The retrieval strategy, used in number series completion tasks, involves direct retrieving of arithmetic knowledge to get the relations between items. The procedural strategy, used in letter series completion tasks, requires counting a certain number of times to detect the relations linking two items. The two strategies require essentially the equivalent cognitive processes, but have different working memory demands (the procedural strategy incurs greater demands). The procedural strategy produced significant greater activity in areas involved in memory retrieval (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, DLPFC) and mental representation/maintenance (posterior parietal cortex, PPC). An ACT-R model of the tasks successfully predicted behavioral performance and BOLD responses. The present findings support a general-purpose dual-process theory of inductive reasoning regarding the cognitive architecture.
人类归纳推理过程的神经关联仍不明确。数字序列和字母序列完成任务是两种典型的归纳推理任务，且具有规则归纳这一共同核心成分。先前的研究表明，在数字序列和字母序列完成任务中会采用不同策略；即便潜在规则相同亦是如此。在本研究中，我们考察了作为解决序列完成任务的两种不同推理策略函数的皮层激活情况。数字序列完成任务中使用的检索策略，涉及直接检索算术知识以获取项目之间的关系。字母序列完成任务中使用的程序策略，则需要进行一定次数的计数以检测连接两个项目的关系。这两种策略本质上需要同等的认知过程，但具有不同的工作记忆需求（程序策略的需求更大）。程序策略在涉及记忆检索的区域（背外侧前额叶皮层，DLPFC）和心理表征/维持区域（顶叶后皮层，PPC）产生了显著更强的活动。该任务的一个ACT - R模型成功预测了行为表现和BOLD反应。本研究结果支持了关于认知结构的归纳推理通用双过程理论。
