An investigation of reasoning by analogy in schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder

Daniel C Krawczyk, Michelle R Kandalaft, Nyaz Didehbani, Tandra T Allen, M Michelle McClelland, Carol A Tamminga, Sandra B Chapman, Daniel C Krawczyk, Michelle R Kandalaft, Nyaz Didehbani, Tandra T Allen, M Michelle McClelland, Carol A Tamminga, Sandra B Chapman

Abstract

Relational reasoning ability relies upon by both cognitive and social factors. We compared analogical reasoning performance in healthy controls (HC) to performance in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and individuals with schizophrenia (SZ). The experimental task required participants to find correspondences between drawings of scenes. Participants were asked to infer which item within one scene best matched a relational item within the second scene. We varied relational complexity, presence of distraction, and type of objects in the analogies (living or non-living items). We hypothesized that the cognitive differences present in SZ would reduce relational inferences relative to ASD and HC. We also hypothesized that both SZ and ASD would show lower performance on living item problems relative to HC due to lower social function scores. Overall accuracy was higher for HC relative to SZ, consistent with prior research. Across groups, higher relational complexity reduced analogical responding, as did the presence of non-living items. Separate group analyses revealed that the ASD group was less accurate at making relational inferences in problems that involved mainly non-living items and when distractors were present. The SZ group showed differences in problem type similar to the ASD group. Additionally, we found significant correlations between social cognitive ability and analogical reasoning, particularly for the SZ group. These results indicate that differences in cognitive and social abilities impact the ability to infer analogical correspondences along with numbers of relational elements and types of objects present in the problems.

Keywords: analogy; autism spectrum disorder; distraction; reasoning; schizophrenia.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The examples of task problem types. The 24 problems included three factors that were varied factorially: number of relations (one-relation or two-relations), presence of distractor item (with or without distractor), and item type involved in the analogy (living or non-living items). Panel A shows an analogy with a single relation (reaching), involves living objects (people and a dog), and contains no distraction. Panel B consists of two relations (containing, and being contained), involves non-living objects (food, bowl, cabinet, groceries, bag, and car) with no distraction. Panel C is a one relation problem (containing) with non-living objects (water, pitcher, and bucket), with a distractor present (the pitcher in the lower picture). Panel D consists of two relations (receiving a message and relaying a message), living objects (people), and has a distractor (the woman in the lower picture).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Overall percent accuracy for each of the participant groups. HC participants showed greater overall performance than SZ participants. There was also a main effect of problem type and a main effect of relational complexity. (A) ASD individuals showed a reduction in performance when solving two-relation, non-living problems. (B) SZ showed reductions in performance for non-living problems and a marginal reduction in performance on two-relation problems. (C) HC participants showed high performance across all problems types.

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