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Breaking the perceptual-conceptual barrier: Relational matching and working memory
J David Smith1, Brooke N Jackson2, Barbara A Church3
1Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, 738 Urban Life Building, 140 Decatur Street, Atlanta, GA, 30303, USA. jsmith395@gsu.edu.
Memory & Cognition
|January 12, 2019
Summary
Working memory is crucial for shifting from perceptual to conceptual tasks. Cognitive reorganization fails under working memory load, impacting relational reasoning abilities.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Comparative Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
Background:
- Investigates human and animal ability to respond to abstract relations, crucial for analogical reasoning.
- Relational matching-to-sample (RMTS) tasks assess understanding of abstract relations like 'same' or 'different'.
- Research aims to uncover cognitive processes underlying successful relational matching.
Purpose of the Study:
- Examine the transition from perceptual to conceptual approaches in RMTS tasks.
- Investigate the role of working memory in this perceptual-conceptual shift.
- Understand cognitive reorganization during abstract relational task solving.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a relational matching-to-sample (RMTS) paradigm.
- Introduced a redundant abstract-relational cue with a perceptual cue, then faded the perceptual cue.
- Assessed participants' ability to transition to a conceptual approach with and without concurrent working memory load.
Main Results:
- Concurrent working memory load impaired the transition from perceptual to conceptual task approaches.
- Participants failed to overcome the perceptual-conceptual barrier unless the working memory load was removed.
- Cognitive reorganization for conceptual solutions is highly dependent on working memory capacity.
Conclusions:
- Successful conceptual task solutions rely on cognitive processes heavily dependent on working memory.
- The study offers detailed insights into cognitive reorganization during abstract relational tasks.
- Findings raise significant questions for cross-species comparisons of relational cognition, particularly animal limitations.
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