How does negative evidence impact argument strength during semantic category-based induction? An event-related potential study

Abstract

Negative evidence may influence category-based inductive reasoning, but the underlying time course of cognitive brain processing is unclear. This study adopted event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate this effect by manipulating the category type (related vs. unrelated) and argument type (positive vs. negative) in a semantic category-based induction task. The behavioral results showed that, under unrelated conditions, a negative argument produced greater argument strength and shorter reaction time than a positive argument did. Meanwhile, the ERP results found a negative argument elicited larger P300, N400, and slow negative component amplitudes than a positive argument, which could possibly embody the expectation-related processing produced by memory updating, semantic integration, and the more complex inference-driven information integration and interpretation processes and cognitive load in hypothesis generation. This study provides novel evidence on the temporal course of how negative evidence influences argument strength during semantic category-based induction.