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A sample problem from the picture analogy set. (A) Analogy item from the distractor set—sandwich:lunchbox::hammer:? in which the answer choices are the correct analogical answer (toolbox), an unrelated item (ribbon), a perceptual distractor (gavel), and a semantic distractor (nail). (B) Representation of the same problem from the no-distractor set. Note that three unrelated answer choices have replaced the three incorrect answer choices shown in (A).
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We compared the reasoning performance of patients with frontal-variant frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) with that of patients with temporal-variant FTLD and healthy controls. In a picture analogy task with a multiple-choice answer format, frontal-variant FTLD patients performed less accurately than temporal-variant FTLD patients, who in tur...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... analogy problems were presented in the format A:B::C:D, where the D item was absent and needed to be completed with one of four answer choices presented beneath the problem (see Fig. 1A). The A and B items (e.g. sandwich and lunchbox) were presented to the left of a vertical line. The C item (hammer) and a question mark were presented to the right of this line. There were four answer choices presented below the problem in all instances. Two versions of the problem set were presented, the distrac- tor set and the ...
Context 2
... distractor set consisted of 16 problems. Answer choices included the correct analogical answer (the toolbox in Fig. 1A), a semantically related dis- tractor item that came from the same semantic category as the C item of the analogy (the nail), a perceptually related distractor that looked similar to the C item (the gavel), and an unrelated distractor item that had no strong rela- tionship to the C item (the ribbon). The specific ordering of answer ...
Context 3
... to the first set with two exceptions: the correct answer appeared in a different spatially ordered position among the answer choices than it had in the distractor set, and the semantic and perceptual incorrect answer choices used in the distractor set were replaced with items unrelated to the C term of the problem (the chicken and witch in Fig. 1B). The no-distractor set was also presented in a new randomized order across all participants. The correct analogical answer appeared an equal number of times in each of the answer choice positions. Refer to Appendix B for a complete list of the items used in the no-distractor ...
Context 4
... during which the participant completed an unrelated cognitive task. The same instructions were presented to the participants in the no-distractor set condition as they had received for the distractor set condition. The example problems were the same, but included three unrelated incorrect choices along with the correct analogical answer (refer to Fig. 1B). Following the instructions, participants completed the no-distractor set using the same procedure that had been used in the distractor set ...
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Citations
... Tasks that have been used previously to measure working memory capacity (Lee et al., 2007;Metzler-Baddeley et al., 2017;St Clair-Thompson & Gathercole, 2006), and high-order components of executive function (i.e., planning and reasoning ability ;Corbett et al., 2015;Metzler-Baddeley et al., 2017). The following descriptions of these high-order components include: planning, responsible for modelling and anticipating the consequences of action before executing goals (Kaller et al., 2008;Unterrainer & Owen, 2006); and reasoning, requiring the ability to draw relationships between disparate or dissimilar phenomena, manipulate working memory and extract information from past and current information in order to achieve an outcome (Goswami et al., 1998;Krawczyk et al., 2008;Waltz et al., 1999). Given the variety of decision rules available, and the lack of consensus over the methods most appropriate for PCA (Crawford & Koopman, 1979;Hakstian et al., 1982), we utilised a four-fold approach as follows: parallel analysis (Horn, 1965), Kaiser criterion (>1; Kaiser, 1960), Cattell's scree plots were inspected (Cattell, 1952) and the interpretability of the statistical output was considered (Fabrigar et al., 1999). ...
... On the other hand, Reasoning ability necessitates the capability to establish connections between disparate or dissimilar phenomena. This process entails the manipulation of working memory and the extraction of pertinent information from historical and current data to achieve desired outcomes (Goswami et al., 1998;Krawczyk et al., 2008;Waltz et al., 1999). Latent variables were then produced by regressing task scores onto the rotated component matrix (Table 1). ...
... High-order executive functions of planning and reasoning ability failed to demonstrate a significant relationship with domain specific performance, opposing prior reports (Jacobson & Matthaeus, 2014;Vestberg et al., 2017). As both cognitive abilities have been associated with behaviour regulation and distraction avoidance (Hasher et al., 2007;Unsworth et al., 2010), in addition to the coordination of attention (Krawczyk et al., 2008), our findings were contradictory to our hypothesis. Particularly when such mechanisms appear to be crucial to the role of a lifeguard (e.g., remaining attentive towards multiple bathers). ...
Two experiments aimed to determine whether working memory capacity (WMC) and high‐order executive functions predict drown detection performance and maintenance under heightened task demands. Experiment 1 ( n = 111) found a positive correlation between enhanced performance scores and higher WMC, while executive function showed no comparable association. Experiment 2 ( n = 28) individuals with elevated WMC demonstrated an ability to detect a greater number of drowning events over an extended period overall, relative to their lower scoring counterparts. However, this heightened capacity did not necessarily prevent the presence of vigilance decrement, but enabled lifeguards to perform more effectively under conditions of increased bather numbers. Our findings highlight that lifeguards have a measurable underlying process that may systematically discriminate lifeguards of varying degrees of experience and detection performance. This offers a new avenue for future lifeguarding research.
... The question of how analogical information is encoded, stored, and accessed in memory to support flexible reasoning and problem solving is a subject of ongoing research and debate. Prior empirical and theoretical work on the cognitive processes supporting analogical reasoning has focused heavily on the need to ignore irrelevant attributes of the items or objects within the analogy (e.g., Krawczyk et al., 2008;Richland et al., 2006). In this example, the fact that a carpenter uses a saw is not relevant to the overall meaning of the analogy. ...
... These studies have predominantly focused on the need to resist distraction from semantically or perceptually similar items when processing four term analogies in the A-B :: C-? format. Poorer performance in these problems has been linked with inhibitory control deficits associated with early child development (Morrison et al., 2011;Richland et al., 2006;Simms et al., 2018;Thibaut et al., 2010;Thibaut & French, 2016), or with frontal lobe damage (Krawczyk et al., 2008;Morrison et al., 2004). In healthy adults, selection of items based on object similarity rather than relational similarity has also been shown to increase when a high cognitive load is present (Waltz et al., 2000). ...
Reasoning about verbal analogies requires selective retrieval of relevant relational information. A consequence of this may be that inhibitory processes in memory cause reduced recall of information associated with analogy-irrelevant relations. The current experiments apply the retrieval-induced forgetting framework to investigate the potential role of such inhibitory processes in analogical reasoning. Participants studied verbal analogies in A-B :: C-D form. Then, half of the A-B pairs from the study phase appeared in verbal analogy problems but with a new C term (A-B :: C-?), and half the items did not appear in verbal analogy problems. A final recall test was then administered for all the original analogies. When the new C term in the analogical reasoning phase conveyed a new relation that was inconsistent with the original relation, reduced recall for items appearing in analogies was observed (Experiment 1). However, when the new C term conveyed a relation that was consistent with the original relation, no forgetting effect was observed (Experiment 1). This forgetting effect occurred even when a hint of the original relation was provided at final recall (Experiment 2). These results indicate that reasoning about analogies may involve inhibitory processes that help reduce competition among competing relations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
... The relation between analogical thinking and EF has been reported extensively in the literature (e.g., Richland & Burchinald, 2013;Weatherholt et al., 2006). Inhibitory behavior and WM as major EFs were reported as intimately related to analogical reasoning capacity (Krawczyk et al., 2008;Thibaut, et al., 2010). The development of analogical thinking was found to depend on the interplay among relational knowledge, the capacity to integrate multiple relations, and the inhibitory control over featural distraction (e.g. ...
The goals of the current study are to examine (a) the effect of mediation of Construction Analogies versus mediation of Closed Analogies on cognitive modifiability in analogical thinking (b) the effect of mediation of analogies on working memory (WM), and (c) the correlation pattern between analogical thinking and WM in Construction and Closed analogies. A sample of Grade 1 children (49 boys and 47 girls) were randomly assigned to Construction analogies (E1, n = 48) and Closed Analogies (E2, n = 48) groups. Children in E1 group were administered the Construction version of the Analogical Modifiability Puzzle Test (AMPT) and children in E2 group were administered the Closed version. Both versions were administered in a dynamic assessment (DA) procedure which includes pre-teaching, teaching and post-teaching phases. Both groups were administered the Children’s Spatial Working Memory (CSWM) test before and after the teaching phase. The findings reveal that both groups improved their analogical thinking from pre- to post-Teaching, with E1 group showing higher improvement than E2 group. Both groups showed significant pre- to post-teaching improvement in WM-- a finding that indicates far-transfer effects. Analogical thinking was significantly correlated with WM in pre-Teaching phase of Construction Analogies whereas analogical thinking was significantly correlated with WM in post-teaching phase of Closed Analogies. The findings raise questions about the cognitive factors involved measuring analogical thinking using a closed analogies format. The findings are discussed in relation to the effects of task characteristics, mediation in DA and recent research on WM.
... It is worth noting that the literature on analogical reasoning has consistently documented the cognitive mechanisms underlying these skills and identified these to be of higher-order thinking (Waltz et al. 1999;Morrison et al. 2004;Viskontas et al. 2004;Bunge, Wendelken, Badre and Wagner 2005;Cho, Holyoak, and Cannon 2007;Krawczyk et al. 2008). This maps on fairly well to the way that we as educators have tended to approach learning objectives or outcomes in the classroom. ...
By relying on literary studies, this article distinguishes science fiction from fantasy: the former representing what has not happened, and the latter representing what could not have happened or what cannot happen. By intention, science fiction never truly severs itself from our experiential world, straddling this limbo of the not-possible and not-impossible, which I demonstrate using the fictional world of The Expanse—the shorthand for the fictional universe created by authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck that subsequently became a six-season TV series. In turn, I argue that despite the creeping trend in IR of examining popular culture and politics in co-constitutive ways, there is still much to be gained from utilizing popular culture for pedagogy. In order to effectively do so, we need to be more specific and explicit about what learning objectives popular culture might achieve in the classroom, such as analogical reasoning and even metacognition.
... Evidence of the atypical cognitive functioning in autistic individuals has also been reported in studies investigating the underlying neural mechanisms of fluid reasoning. In TD children, solving complex problems was associated with changes in prefrontal activity (Crone et al., 2009;Wright et al., 2008), regions largely involved in executive functions, and working memory (Krawczyk et al., 2008(Krawczyk et al., , 2011Morrison et al., 2004). A meta-analysis revealed that autistic individuals displayed a decrease in task-related activity in prefrontal regions and stronger cerebral activity in certain higher-level visual regions during visual processing of different stimuli (i.e., faces, objects, and words; (Samson et al., 2012). ...
In light of the known visuoperceptual strengths and altered language skills in autism, we investigated the impact of problem content (semantic/visuospatial) combined with complexity and presence of lures on fluid reasoning in 43 autistic and 41 typical children (6–13 years old). Increased complexity and presence of lures diminished performance, but less so as the children’s age increased. Typical children were slightly more accurate overall, whereas autistic children were faster at solving complex visuospatial problems. Thus, reasoning could rely more extensively on visuospatial strategies in autistic versus typical children. A combined speed-accuracy measure revealed similar performance in both groups, suggesting a similar pace in fluid reasoning development. Visual presentation of conceptual information seems to suit the reasoning processes of autistic children.
... Broadly, these studies demonstrate that individuals who score higher on standard measures of EFs also tend to score higher on standard measures of reasoning. In particular, working memory and inhibitory control are frequently found to correlate positively with reasoning in both adults (Grossnickle et al., 2016;Krawczyk et al., 2008) and children (Fry & Hale, 2000;Richland & Burchinal, 2013;Richland et al., 2006;Starr et al., 2018;Thibaut & French, 2016;Thibaut et al., 2010). ...
Relational thinking, the ability to represent abstract, generalizable relations, is a core component of reasoning and human cognition. Relational thinking contributes to fluid reasoning and academic achievement, particularly in the domain of math. However, due to the complex nature of many fluid reasoning tasks, it has been difficult to determine the degree to which relational thinking has a separable role from the cognitive processes collectively known as executive functions (EFs). Here, we used a simplified reasoning task to better understand how relational thinking contributes to math achievement in a large, diverse sample of elementary and middle school students ( N = 942). Students also performed a set of ten adaptive EF assessments, as well as tests of math fluency and fraction magnitude comparison. We found that relational thinking was significantly correlated with each of the three EF composite scores previously derived from this dataset, albeit no more strongly than they were with each other. Further, relational thinking predicted unique variance in students’ math fluency and fraction magnitude comparison scores over and above the three EF composites. Thus, we propose that relational thinking be considered an EF in its own right as one of the core, mid‐level cognitive abilities that supports cognition and goal‐directed behavior.
Research Highlights
Relational thinking, the process of identifying and integrating relations, develops over childhood and is central to reasoning.
We collected data from nearly 1000 elementary and middle schoolers on a test of relational thinking, ten standard executive function tasks, and two math tests.
Relational thinking predicts unique variance in math achievement not accounted for by canonical EFs throughout middle childhood.
We propose that relational thinking should be conceptualized as a core executive function that supports cognitive development and learning.
... Due to their framing (typically non-verbal problems, including familiar situations and objects) and ecological validity (resemblance to making real-life analogies), four-term analogies and scene analogies have been highly useful for studies on healthy adults (e.g., Chuderska & Chuderski, 2014;Waltz et al., 2000) and children (e.g., Richland et al., 2006;Richland & Burchinal, 2013;Thibaut et al., 2010), as well as in various clinical groups (e.g., Krawczyk et al., 2008Krawczyk et al., , 2010Krawczyk et al., , 2014Kucwaj & Chuderski, 2020;Morrison et al., 2004). Both paradigms are well suited for introducing precise experimental manipulations aimed at uncovering mechanisms of distraction in analogy. ...
... One of the crucial factors that affects solving four-term analogies is the presence of distractors among the response options (e.g., Krawczyk et al., 2008;Kucwaj & Chuderski, 2020;Thibaut et al., 2010). In the most typical version of distraction condition, the response options comprise the correct option as well as either a semantic distractor and two unrelated objects (e.g., Glady et al., 2017;Krawczyk et al., 2008;Thibaut & French, 2016), or a semantic distractor, a perceptual distractor, and one unrelated object (e.g., Starr et al., 2018;Whitaker et al., 2018;Vendetti et al., 2017). ...
... One of the crucial factors that affects solving four-term analogies is the presence of distractors among the response options (e.g., Krawczyk et al., 2008;Kucwaj & Chuderski, 2020;Thibaut et al., 2010). In the most typical version of distraction condition, the response options comprise the correct option as well as either a semantic distractor and two unrelated objects (e.g., Glady et al., 2017;Krawczyk et al., 2008;Thibaut & French, 2016), or a semantic distractor, a perceptual distractor, and one unrelated object (e.g., Starr et al., 2018;Whitaker et al., 2018;Vendetti et al., 2017). A semantic distractor is defined as an object that belongs to the same semantic category as C (Krawczyk et al., 2008) or as an object whose meaning is associated with C (Starr et al., 2018;Vendetti et al., 2017). ...
Reasoning by analogy requires mapping relational correspondence between two situations to transfer information from the more familiar (source) to the less familiar situation (target). However, the presence of distractors may lead to invalid conclusions based on semantic or perceptual similarities instead of on relational correspondence. To understand the role of distraction in analogy making, we examined semantically rich four-term analogies (A:B::C:?) and scene analogies, as well as semantically lean geometric analogies and the matrix task tapping general reasoning. We examined (a) what types of lures were most distracting, (b) how the two semantically rich analogy tasks were related, and (c) how much variance in the scores could be attributed to general reasoning ability. We observed that (a) in four-term analogies the distractors semantically related to C impacted performance most strongly, as compared to the perceptual, categorical, and relational distractors, but the two latter distractor types also mattered; (b) distraction sources in four-term and scene analogies were virtually unrelated; and (c) general reasoning explained the largest part of variance in resistance to distraction. The results suggest that various sources of distraction operate at different stages of analogical reasoning and differently affect specific analogy paradigms.
... However, in the process of selecting that D-term, the greater association between the C-term with a high salience distracter option (silver) may cause one to select this relationally inconsistent distracter rather than to complete the alignment of the B and D-terms. This derailment of the alignment is even more likely for those with less inhibitory control over salient responses, such as adults with frontal lobe injuries/disease (Krawczyk et al., 2008;Morrison et al., 2004) and children (Richland et al., 2006;Thibaut et al., 2010;Thibaut, French, Missault, et al., 2011a;Thibaut, French, Vezneva, et al., 2011b), and can also occur in young adults (Bugaiska & Thibaut, 2015). In addition to predicting a main effect of distracter salience as found in prior studies (e.g., Bugaiska & Thibaut, 2015), we also predict an interaction with semantic distance. ...
... Prior results of distracter salience were limited to children (e.g., Thibaut et al., 2010, except for Bugaiska & Thibaut, 2015 and patients with frontal lobe damage (Krawczyk et al., 2008;Morrison et al., 2004). Moreover, these prior studies used different analogy stems across distracter conditions (Bugaiska & Thibaut, 2015) or included a perceptual distracter (Krawczyk et al., 2008), thereby potentially confounding distracter salience with other aspects of the analogy. ...
... Prior results of distracter salience were limited to children (e.g., Thibaut et al., 2010, except for Bugaiska & Thibaut, 2015 and patients with frontal lobe damage (Krawczyk et al., 2008;Morrison et al., 2004). Moreover, these prior studies used different analogy stems across distracter conditions (Bugaiska & Thibaut, 2015) or included a perceptual distracter (Krawczyk et al., 2008), thereby potentially confounding distracter salience with other aspects of the analogy. Our results extend the findings of distracter salience to younger adults using a highly controlled stimulus set that specifically manipulated the semantic association strengths between the C-term and distracters. ...
Prior studies of A:B::C:D verbal analogies have identified several factors that affect performance, including the semantic similarity between source and target domains (semantic distance), the semantic association between the C-term and incorrect answers (distracter salience), and the type of relations between word pairs. However, it is unclear how these stimulus properties affect performance when utilized together. To test their interactive effects, we created a verbal analogy stimulus set that factorially crossed these factors, and presented participants with an analogical stem (A:B::C:?) with two response choices: an analogically correct (D) and incorrect distracter (D’) term. The semantic distance between source and target word pairs was manipulated creating near (BOWL:DISH::SPOON:SILVERWARE) and far (WRENCH:TOOL::SAD:MOOD) analogies. The salience of an incorrect distracter (D’) was manipulated using the sematic distance with the C-term creating low (DRAWER) and high (FORK) salience distracters. Causal, compositional, and categorical relations were presented across these conditions. Accuracies were higher for semantically near than far analogies and when distracter salience was low than high. Categorical relations yielded better performance than the causal and compositional relations. Moreover, a three-way interaction demonstrated that the effects of semantic distance and distracter salience had a greater impact on performance for compositional and causal relations than for the categorical ones. We theorize that causal and compositional analogies, given their less semantically constrained responses, require more inhibitory control than more constraining relations (e.g., categorical).
... Behavioral studies have shown that the presence of irrelevant related information during convergent thinking (recognizing the commonality of items that appear to be different or unrelated) impairs performance, and that efficient inhibitory control is related to good performance. Thus, good inhibitory abilities correlate highly with performance on convergent-thinking tasks, such as the remote-association test (RAT; Storm & Angello, 2010) and analogical-reasoning tasks (see Doumas et al., 2018, for computational simulations), and impaired inhibition in patients with frontal-lobe damage reduces their problem-solving performance in the presence of interfering or distracting information (Krawczyk et al., 2008). Neuroimaging and electroencephalography studies have also produced evidence of the engagement of prefrontally driven inhibitory control during analogical reasoning. ...
Knowledge in memory is vast and not always relevant for the task at hand. Recent views suggest that our cognitive system has evolved so that it includes goal-driven control mechanisms to regulate the level of activation of specific pieces of knowledge and make distracting or unwanted information in memory less accessible. This operation is primarily directed to facilitate the use of task-relevant knowledge. However, these control processes may also have side effects on performance, even unwittingly, in a variety of situations as long as the task at hand partly relies on access to suppressed information. In this paper, we show that different types of information to be used in different contexts (problem solving, decisions on personal information or language production) may be the target of inhibitory control. We also show that the control process may leave a behavioral signature across a variety of domains if suppressed information turns out to be relevant shortly after being suppressed.
... Semantic knowledge (as assessed through the categorical or attribute knowledge of objects or public events) is also decreased in bvFTD Johnson et al., 2011;Matuszewski et al., 2006). Deficits have also been revealed through tasks tapping on analogy processing (Krawczyk et al., 2008;Morrison et al., 2004) as well as proverb or idiom comprehension (Luzzi et al., 2020;Reyes et al., 2018). Semantic categorization (defining which item belongs to a target category) is also impaired in bvFTD (Hughes et al., 2011;Koenig et al., 2006vs. ...
Although behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is classically defined by behavioral and socio-emotional changes, impairments often extend to other cognitive functions. These include early speech and language deficits related to the disease’s core neural disruptions. Yet, their scope and clinical relevance remains poorly understood. This systematic review characterizes such disturbances in bvFTD, considering clinically, neuroanatomically, genetically, and neuropathologically defined subgroups. We included 181 experimental studies, with at least 5 bvFTD patients diagnosed using accepted criteria, comparing speech and language outcomes between bvFTD patients and healthy controls or between bvFTD subgroups. Results reveal extensive and heterogeneous deficits across cohorts, with (a) consistent lexico-semantic, reading & writing, and prosodic impairments; (b) inconsistent deficits in motor speech and grammar; and (c) relative preservation of phonological skills. Also, preliminary findings suggest that the severity of speech and language deficits might be associated with global cognitive impairment, predominantly temporal or fronto-temporal atrophy and MAPT mutations (vs C9orf72). Although under-recognized, these impairments contribute to patient characterization and phenotyping, while potentially informing diagnosis and management.
