P3a amplitude is related to conclusion specificity during category-based induction

• Published in: PloS one 2020-03, Vol.15 (3), p.e0229515-e0229515
• Main Authors: Wang, Hong, Cui, Ruifang, Long, Changquan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Amplitudes; Analogies; Biology and Life Sciences; Categories; Cognition & reasoning; Comparative analysis; Enterprise resource planning; Event-related potentials; Experiments; Fruits; Generic drugs; Laboratories; Medicine and Health Sciences; Molecular structure; Novels; Personality; Physical Sciences; Replicating; Research and Analysis Methods; Resource allocation; Similarity; Social Sciences; Studies; Thresholds; Visual evoked potentials
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0229515

Category-based induction involves the generalization of a novel property (conclusion property) to a new category (conclusion category), based on the knowledge that a category exemplar (premise category) has the respective novel property. Previous studies have shown that conclusion specificity (i.e., specific [S] or generic categories [G]) influences category-based induction. However, the timing of brain activity underlying this effect is not well known, especially with controlling the similarities of premise and conclusion categories between S and G arguments. In this study, the event-related potential (ERP) responses to category-based induction between S and G arguments were compared under both congruent (+, premise and conclusion categories are related) and incongruent (-, premise and conclusion categories are unrelated) arguments; additionally, the similarities of premise and conclusion categories between S and G arguments were controlled. The results showed that replicating this effect, S+ arguments have increased "strong" response rates compared to G+ arguments, suggesting that category-based induction is contingent on factors beyond matched similarities. Moreover, S arguments have more liberal inductive decision thresholds than G arguments, which suggest that conclusion specificity affects the inductive decision reflected by inductive decision thresholds. Furthermore, G+ arguments elicit greater P3a amplitudes than S+ arguments, which suggest greater attention resources allocation to the review of decisions for G+ arguments than that for S+ arguments. Taken together, the conclusion specificity effect during semantic category-based induction can be revealed by "strong" response rates, inductive decision thresholds, and P3a component after controlling the premise-conclusion similarity, providing evidence that category-based induction rely on more than simple similarity judgment and conclusion specificity would affect category-based induction.