Working Memory And Transitive Reasoning

Working memory is a concept that was presented by Baddeley and Hitch in 1974. It relates to high-level cognitive activities, and provides temporary storage and manipulation of the information necessary for such complex cognitive tasks as language comprehension, learning, and reasoning. Working memory has become one of focus questions researched by cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Using the five-term task as the experimental task, this study discussed the working memory's mechanism in transitive reasoning. It included three experiments. Selecting 60 students respective from the 7th, 10th and 13th grade as the subjects, experiment1 compared the mental model theory with the formal rule theory, and discussed the inner mental representation of transitive reasoning basically; Using 80 university students as subjects, experiment2 explored the effect of each component in working memory on transitive reasoning with the dual-task experimental paradigm, and further discussed the inner mental representation of transitive reasoning in working memory; Experiment3 used the latent-variable method, combined working memory, processing speed, inhibition with transitive reasoning, and constructed a structural equation model between working memory and transitive reasoning. The main conclusions are as follows: Firstly, not all the subjects engage in mental model construction to solve transitive reasoning so that the applicability of mental model theory is limited. The low-grade subjects seldom use mental model. However, as the age increases, more and more subjects use mental model to solve transitive reasoning. Probably, the use of mental model relates to the maturation of subjects. Secondly, three components of working memory are all involved in the solution process of transitive reasoning, but the extent to participate in it is different. The central executive system plays a major role in the transitive reasoning, the visual-spatial sketchpad has a lesser role, and the phonological loop has the least role. The phonological loop has not an effect on premise intake, but on solution inference. The subjects construct spatial representation to solve the transitive reasoning. Thirdly, the working memory capacity plays a critical role in transitive reasoning. Processing speed has an indirect effect on transitive reasoning by working memory capacity. Working memory capacity and processing speed explain the 83% variances in transitive reasoning. This study presents a new opinion on the applicability of mental model theory from the cognition development angle, which is significant for the improvement and development of mental model theory. It first combined inhibition, processing speed with working memory, and discussed the role of these three factors in transitive reasoning generally. It has strong innovation, and has edificatory meaning for the future researches.