UniversalsandVaria-oninSpa-alReferencing:

AreSpa-alMentalModelsUniversal?

MarcoRagni

Cogni-veComputa-onLabUniversityofFreiburg

ragni@informa-k.uni-freiburg.de

Myfocus

Language

BackgroundKnowledge

Cogni-veprocessing(WM)

Spa-alMentalModels

Reasoningaboutspa-alrela-onsI

Whichrela-onholdsbetweenDandE?

Premises:

Ques+on:

Model:

EisinfrontofA

A*istothelePofBBistothelePofCDisinfrontofC

E

A B

D

C

*Justforrepresenta-onalreasonsleRersinsteadofwordsareused…

AistothelePofCBistothelePofC

EisinfrontofA

AistothelePofB

DisinfrontofC

E

A B

D

C

C

E

A B

D

Whichrela-onholdsbetweenDandE?

E

A B

D

C

Spa-alreasoningaboutrela-ons:Ambiguousrepresenta-on

Johnson-Laird&Byrne,1991;Knauffetal.,1995;Rauhetal.,2005

Reasoningaboutrela-onsII

BobistallerthanDebbie.

IsCharlytallerthanDebbie?

CharlyistallerthanAdam.

BobissmallerthanAdam.

AdamistallerthanBob.

IsCharlytallerthanDebbie?

BobistallerthanDebbie.

CharlyistallerthanAdam.

Nejasmic,J.,Bucher,L.andKnauff,M.,2015.Theconstruc-onofspa-almentalmodels—Anewviewonthecon-nuityeffect.TheQuarterlyJournalofExperimentalPsychology,68(9),pp.1794-1812.

Discon+nuityandfigureeffect Con+nuityeffect

Universals?

Ø  Hypothesis:Cogni-vespa-alprocessesthatarenotdirectlyrelatedtolanguageregionsinthebrainarerather“universal”Ø  Dueto“workingmemory”processesofparsimoniousrepresenta-onsØ  Duetothelocaliza-onoftheseprocessesØ  BuildingupontheHard-andSoPwareidea:

Brain,Knowledge,Language

Ø  Hypothesis:Wecangainsomeinsightifwelookwhichregionsareac-veinthebrainwhenspa-alrela-onalinforma-onisprocessed?

Meta-analysis Frontal Lobe Parietal Lobe

Prefrontal Cortex Inferior Frontal Gyrus vlPFC Superior Parietal Cortex Inferior Parietal Cortex

MC PMC (dorsolateral) (pars oper.) (pars triang.)

(pars orb.)

medial lateral AG TPJ / SMG

Author Year BA 4 6 8 9 10 11 44 45 46 47 5 / 7 5 / 7 39 40

Prado et al. 2012 � � � � � � (�) (�) � �

spatial

Goel & Dolan 2001

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Knauff et al. 2002

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Ruff et al. 2003

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Goel & Dolan 2001

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Bunge 2009

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Hinton et al. 2010

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non-spatial

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!

Ragni,Franzmeier,Wenczel&Maier(2014)

Whatistheroleoftheseregionsinthespa-alreasoningprocess?

TMS Methods Spa-almentalmodelsandtherSPLTranscranialMagne-cS-mula-on

Ø  Effectofs-mula-onsite:Vertex>SPLs-mula-on

Ø  Effectofmodeltype:incorrect>correctmodelspreferred>alterna-vemodels

Ø  SPLS-mula-onofcorrectmodelsaffectedtheaccuracy,whileincorrectmodelsremainedunaffected

Ø  WorkingmemorycapacitymoderateseffectofTMS

Ragni,Franzmeier,Maier&Knauff(2016).Uncertainrela-onalreasoningintheparietalcortex.Brainandcogni-on,104:72–81.

Localiza-onofSpa-alMentalModels

Openques-onsØ  Cogni-veprocessing:

Meta-analysisshowstheinvolvementoftheSPLinthemodelconstruc-onandvaria-onprocessTMS-StudysupportstheroleoftheSPLforthemanipula-onof“spa-almentalmodels“

Ø  Islanguageandbackgroundknowledgemorerelevantfortheconstruc-onofmodels?

Ø  ArePMMstableacrosscultures?Notfortopologicalinforma-on(Knauff&Ragni,2011)?

Ø  Neuro-experimentssofaronlyforspecificrela-onsandonlyinEnglish/German/Japanese.Whatisaboutotherlanguages?Especiallylanguagesthatusesamewordsfordifferentsitua-ons?(Bloom,1999)