The relationship between visuospatial and analogical reasoning

Abstract

We report six experiments that examine the relationship between visuospatial and analogical reasoning. In Experiments 1–3b, participants completed a series of spatial assessments and analogical reasoning tasks. In Experiment 2, participants were assigned to one of three training conditions that involved analogical reasoning. One group visualized the elements in each scenario (visualization training), a second group identified the spatial relationships in each scenario (spatial training), and a third group identified the corresponding elements between two scenarios (analogy training). Participants completed pre- and post-tests, wherein they solved various analogy problems; Experiments 3a–4b were similar but did not include an analogy training condition. In Experiments 1–3b, a positive relationship between visuospatial and analogical reasoning was observed (regardless of the perceptibility of the analogy’s spatial relations), as participants who performed better on the spatial measures also demonstrated better analogical reasoning. Furthermore, in Experiments 2 and 4b, spatial training led to greater posttest performance than the visualization training, but this outcome was not observed in Experiments 3a–4a. A combined analysis (Experiments 2–4b), however, revealed a small, but reliable advantage of spatial over visualization training. These findings suggest that strategies that encourage spatial reasoning might better aid analogical learning and reasoning than strategies that encourage visualization.