Various sources of distraction during analogical reasoning

Abstract

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.

The causal mechanisms underlying analogical reasoning performance improvement by executive attention intervention

“…Previous study has proposed that the intervention enhanced interference inhibitory and voluntary attention shift to get rid of distractions, then enhanced relation integration and thereby leading better behavioral performance (Lin et al, 2022 ). Theoretically, the ability to disengage from the chaos to find the correct information is crucial (Burgoyne & Engle, 2020 ) as the individual is confronted with various distractions in analogical reasoning (Kucwaj et al, 2022 ). Previous studies found that subjects with high intelligence showed higher alpha power in problem solving compared to the low (Jaušovec, 1996 ) and increased alpha power indicated the stimuli out of attention (Händel et al, 2011 ), thus the result suggested that the intervention first enhanced the disengagement in analogical reasoning.…”

Captured by associations: Semantic distractibility during analogical reasoning in schizophrenia

“…The order of problems was fully randomized across the task, so was the order of response options in each trial. All problems were selected from a larger bank of 40 problems, which had been carefully validated in a large sample ( n = 471) of young, healthy adults ( Kucwaj et al, 2021 , Kucwaj et al, 2022 ). All the stimuli were pictures of common objects; there were no two identical pictures within the entire item set.…”