Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

How abstract is symbolic thought?

David Landy1, Robert L Goldstone

  • 1Department of Computer Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. dlandy@cs.indiana.edu

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition
|June 20, 2007
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Reply to Kardosh and Sklar: Prioritizing domain-general explanations of misperception.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2026
Same author

Bias in Self-Knowledge of Global Communities.

Cognitive science·2025
Same author

An information-theoretic foreshadowing of mathematicians' sudden insights.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2025
Same author

A Comprehensive Study of the Cobalt(II) Chelation Mechanism by an Iminodiacetate-Decorated Disaccharide Ligand.

Molecules (Basel, Switzerland)·2025
Same author

Quirks of cognition explain why we dramatically overestimate the size of minority groups.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2025
Same author

The present and future of peer review: Ideas, interventions, and evidence.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2025
Same journal

Memory loves company: Related object pairs benefit working memory.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same journal

Ranschburg unrepeated.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same journal

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times: Evidence for switch cost beyond stimulus-response tasks.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same journal

Testing the predictions of a distinctiveness model of memory: The production effect in backward recall.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same journal

On the impact of adjacency on transposed-word effects under serial presentation.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
Same journal

It's time to opt out: Metacognitive analysis of time regulation under uncertainty.

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition·2026
See all related articles

Visual layout significantly impacts mathematical rule application. When visual cues align with mathematical conventions, like the order of operations, reasoning accuracy improves, suggesting symbolic reasoning is more visual than assumed.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Mathematical Cognition
  • Visual Perception

Background:

  • Rule-based syntactic judgments are fundamental to formal reasoning.
  • The influence of visual perception on abstract rule application, particularly in mathematics, is not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of visual layout in rule-based syntactic judgments within mathematical contexts.
  • To determine if non-mathematical visual grouping cues affect the application of mathematical conventions, specifically the order of operations.

Main Methods:

  • Four experiments were conducted using algebraic equations to test participants' ability to apply the order of operations.
  • A non-mathematical grouping pressure was manipulated to either support or interfere with the standard mathematical grouping conventions.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Participant accuracy was highest when the non-mathematical visual grouping supported the mathematical convention.
  • This accuracy improvement was more pronounced when judgments relied on the order of operator precedence.
  • Visual perception demonstrably impacts rule application in mathematics.

Conclusions:

  • Formally symbolic reasoning appears to be more influenced by visual perception than commonly acknowledged.
  • These findings have broad implications for understanding relational reasoning and the interplay between visual processing and abstract thought.