Not all analogies are created equal: Associative and categorical analogy processing following brain damage
DOI
10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.02.022
Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Date
6-1-2012
Publication Title
Neuropsychologia
Volume
50
Issue
7
First Page
1372
Last Page
1379
ISSN
283932
Keywords
Associative relations, Categorical relations, Neuropsychological studies, Right hemisphere, Semantic processing, Verbal analogy
Abstract
Current research on analogy processing assumes that different conceptual relations are treated similarly. However, just as words and concepts are related in distinct ways, different kinds of analogies may employ distinct types of relationships. An important distinction in how words are related is the difference between associative (dog-bone) and categorical (dog-cat) relations. To test the hypothesis that analogical mapping of different types of relations would have different neural instantiations, we tested patients with left and right hemisphere lesions on their ability to understand two types of analogies, ones expressing an associative relationship and others expressing a categorical relationship. Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) and behavioral analyses revealed that associative analogies relied on a large left-lateralized language network while categorical analogies relied on both left and right hemispheres. The verbal nature of the task could account for the left hemisphere findings. We argue that categorical relations additionally rely on the right hemisphere because they are more difficult, abstract, and fragile, and contain more distant relationships. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.
Open Access
Green Accepted
Preprint
Repository Citation
Schmidt, G., Cardillo, E., Kranjec, A., Lehet, M., Widick, P., & Chatterjee, A. (2012). Not all analogies are created equal: Associative and categorical analogy processing following brain damage. Neuropsychologia, 50 (7), 1372-1379. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.02.022