Inductive Reasoning Differs Between Taxonomic and Thematic Contexts: Electrophysiological Evidence

Inductive reasoning can be performed in different contexts, but it is unclear whether the neural mechanism of reasoning performed in a thematic context (e.g., bee has x, so honey has x) is the same as that performed in a taxonomic context (e.g., bee has x, so butterfly 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 Event related potential (ERP) results indicated that the effect of 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 anterior regions, while the distance effect on taxonomic-based inductive reasoning conditions was found in the posterior regions. These results support the view that inductive reasoning is performed differently under different semantic contexts.