Inductive reasoning differs between taxonomic and thematic contexts: Electrophysiological evidence

Abstract

Inductive reasoning can be performed in different contexts, but it is unclear whether the neural mechanism of inductive reasoning performed in a thematic context (e.g., panda has x, so bamboo has x) is the same as that performed in a taxonomic context (e.g., panda has x, so bear has x). In the present study, participants were required to judge whether a conclusion was acceptable or not based on its premise, for which the taxonomic or thematic distances between premise and conclusion objects were either far or near. The ERP results indicated that the effect of reasoning context (taxonomic vs. thematic) was initially observed in the P2 component; while the distance effect (far vs. near) was observed in N400 and late components. Moreover, the distance effect on thematic-based inductive reasoning was found in the frontal and frontal-central brain regions, while the distance effect in taxonomic-based inductive reasoning conditions was found in the central-parietal and parietal regions. These results support the view that inductive reasoning is performed differently under different semantic contexts.