Intuitive interference in quantitative reasoning

TLDR: Varying the level of interference exerted by the unattended feature 'area' affected the relative level of activation of right parietal regions but not orbital frontal cortex suggesting that the former is responding to the degree of facilitation while the latter is responsive to the presence of conflict.

About: This article is published in Brain Research.The article was published on 2006-02-16 and is currently open access. It has received 42 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Parietal lobe.

Figures

Table 2 – Areas of activation

Fig. 2 – Activity reflecting differences between congruent and incongruent conditions. Group data are plotted on parasagittal sections of a normalized template structural brain scan derived from one subject, next to error bars showing the size of parameter estimates for correct congruent and incongruent stimuli. (a) A right parietal region showing enhanced activity associated with congruent trials (congruent–incongruent) (60, −34, 28, BA 40); and parameter

Table 1 – Rate of success and reaction times (ms) in the differe

Fig. 1 – Experimental design. Subjects performed one task, in one session that required a comparison of perimeter length of two shapes presented sequentially. Subjects had to decide whether the perimeter of the second shape was larger/equal/ smaller than that of the previous shape. They responded by pressing the appropriate button in a response box: the left button for the ‘smaller’, the middle button for ‘equal’ and the right for ‘larger perimeter’. There were two types of shapes unfilled and filled, and two conditions congruent where area and perimeter changed in the same direction and incongruent where area changed and perimeter stayed the same. The first shape was presented for 1000 ms; the second shape was presented for 3000 ms during which the subjects had to press the button of their choice. There was an inter-stimulus interval of 500 ms.

Fig. 4 – Activity reflecting the role of salience. Half of the stimuli used in our study had a higher level of salience of the irrelevant feature ‘area’ (filled shapes) than the other half of the stimuli (unfilled shapes). Group data for the interaction [(congruent filled–congruent unfilled)–(incongruent filled–incongruent unfilled)] are plotted on parasagittal

Fig. 3 – Activity reflecting differences between correct and incorrect incongruent trials. Group data are plotted on parasagittal sections of a normalized template structural brain scan derived from one subject, next to error bars showing the size of parameter estimates for correct congruent, correct incongruent and incorrect intuitive incongruent stimuli. (a) Parietal regions showing enhanced activity associated with intuitive error in incongruent trials (incongruent error–incongruent correct) (58, −18, 28, BA 7); and parameter estimates + standard error for congruent, incongruent correct and incongruent intuitive error; (b) Lateral orbital frontal gyrus showing enhanced activity associated with conflict resolution in incongruent trials (incongruent correct–incongruent error) (40, 32, −16, BA 47) and parameter estimates + standard error for congruent, incongruent correct and incongruent error (Con refers to congruent, Incon to incongruent and Corr to correct).