Reasoning is a key component of adaptable "executive" behavior and is known to depend on a network of frontal and parietal brain regions. However, the mechanisms by which this network supports reasoning and adaptable behavior remain poorly defined. Here, we examine the relationship between reasoning, executive control, and frontoparietal function in a series of nonverbal reasoning experiments. ...

Intentional harms are typically judged to be less forgivable than accidental harms. This difference depends on mental state reasoning (i.e., reasoning about beliefs and intentions), supported by a group of brain regions, the ‘theory of mind’ network. Prior research has found that (i) interfering with activity in this network can shift moral judgments away from reliance on mental state informati...

Recent research in case-based reasoning suggests the use of metacognitive approaches to control the reasoning process. Whereas most of this research focuses on issues related to retrieval and representation, we describe a metacognitive approach to case adaptation based on the generation of questions and answers. The answer generation utilizes particular planning knowledge in the form of introsp...

Mental state reasoning or theory-of-mind has been the subject of a rich body of imaging research. Although such investigations routinely tap a common set of regions, the precise function of each area remains a contentious matter. With the help of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we sought to determine which areas are involved when processing mental state or intentional metarepresen...

Little is known about the functional and neural architecture of social reasoning, one major obstacle being that we crucially lack the relevant tools to test potentially different social reasoning components. In the case of belief reasoning, previous studies have tried to separate the processes involved in belief reasoning per se from those involved in the processing of the high incidental deman...

According to the theory of 'promiscuous teleology', humans are naturally biased to (mistakenly) construe natural kinds as if they (like artifacts) were intentionally designed 'for a purpose'. However, this theory introduces two paradoxes. First, if infants readily distinguish natural kinds from artifacts, as evidence suggests, why do school-aged children erroneously conflate this distinction? S...

The "intentional stance" is the disposition to treat an entity as a rational agent, possessing particular beliefs, desires, and intentions, in order to interpret and predict it's behavior. The intentional stance is a component of a broader social cognitive function, mentalizing. Here we report a study that investigates the neural substrates of "on-line" mentalizing, using PET, by asking volunte...

The study aimed to explore the strategies used by Costa Rican primary school students when comparing urn probabilities. sample was intentional and consisted of 55 6th graders. Using an interpretive approach, we analyzed children’s responses a questionnaire five probability comparison items taken from previous studies, including different levels proportional reasoning. Results indicate that prob...

The acquisition of causal knowledge is a primary goal of childhood; yet most of this knowledge is known already to adults. We argue that causal learning which leverages social reasoning is a rapid and important route to knowledge. We present a computational model integrating knowledge about causality with knowledge about intentional agency, but using a domaingeneral mechanism for reasoning. Inf...

OBJECTIVES Spatial neglect may result from disruption of sensory-attentional systems that spatially allocate perceptual resources and the motor-intentional systems that direct exploration and action. Previous studies have suggested that the line bisection task is more sensitive to sensory-attentional disorders and the cancellation task to motor-intentional disorders. A new technique was develop...