Is relational reasoning dependent on language? A voxel-based lesion symptom mapping study.

By Juliana V. Baldo, Silvia A. Bunge, Stephen M. Wilson, Nina F. Dronkers. 2010

112 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Previous studies with brain-injured patients have suggested that language abilities are necessary for complex problem solving, even when tasks are non-verbal. In the current study, we tested this notion by analyzing behavioral and neuroimaging data from a large group of left-hemisphere stroke patients (n = 107) suffering from a range of language impairment from none to severe. Patients were tested on the Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices (RCPM), a non-verbal test of reasoning that requires participants to complete a visual pattern or sequence with one of six possible choices. For some items, the solution could be determined by visual pattern-matching, but other items required more complex, relational reasoning. As predicted, performance on the relational-reasoning items was disproportionately affected in language-impaired patients with aphasia, relative to non-aphasic, left-hemisphere patients. A voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM) procedure was used to relate patients’ RCPM performance with areas of damage in the brain. Results showed that deficits on the relational reasoning problems were associated with lesions in the left middle and superior temporal gyri, regions essential for language processing, as well as in the left inferior parietal lobule. In contrast, the visual pattern-matching condition was associated with lesions in posterior portions of the left hemisphere that subserve visual processing, namely, occipital and inferotemporal cortex. These findings provide compelling support for the idea that language is critical for higher-level reasoning and problem-solving.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

Relational Reasoning and Its Manifestations in the Educational Context: a Systematic Review of the Literature (2013, methodology): “Even today, the Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM) is a commonly used set of stimuli in empirical research studying relational reasoning (e.g., Baldo et al. 2010).”
Placing language in an integrated understanding system: Next steps toward human-level performance in neural language models (2020, background): “Indeed, the frontal and parietal lobes are associated with representation of space and action (which causes change in relations), and patients with lesions to the frontal and parietal language-related areas have profound deficits in relational reasoning tasks (57).”