An fMRI analysis of the efficacy of Euler diagrams in logical reasoning

Yuri Sato, Sayako Masuda, Yoshiaki Someya, Takeo Tsujii, Shigeru Watanabe

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceeding with ISSN or ISBNConference contribution with ISSN or ISBNpeer-review

Abstract

We compared participant performance and brain activation changes during a syllogism-solving task with and with­ out Euler diagrams, using functional magnetic resonance imaging ( RI). Our experiment showed that when Euler diagrams were present, (i) response times in the task were signi cantly shorter than those in the usual reasoning task comprising only sentences, and (ii) the magnitude of activation in the left middle frontal gyrus (near BA 10), left inferior PFC (near BA 47), and left dorsal PFC (BA 6) was reduced. Result (i) provides evidence for the occurrence of cognitive offloading even when participants handle information of both sentences and diagrams in reasoning tasks. Result (ii) suggests that complex processes of inferences can be replaced by simple diagram manipulation. It is argued that cognitive details that are not fully speci ed by behavioral studies can be made salient using neuroscientific methods.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of 2015 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC 2015)
Place of PublicationLos Alamitos, CA
PublisherIEEE Computer Society Press
Pages143-151
Number of pages9
ISBN (Print)9781467374576
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 17 Dec 2015
EventProceedings of 2015 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC 2015) - Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 2015
Duration: 17 Dec 2015 → …

Conference

ConferenceProceedings of 2015 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC 2015)
Period17/12/15 → …

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