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# Logical reasoning, world knowledge, and mental imagery: Interconnections in cognitive processes

## Details

**Authors** Clement and Falmagne

**Year** 1986

**Publisher** Memory & Cognition

**Discipline** Cognitive Science

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202507) 
10.3758/BF03202507

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

Explore the process of making relationships in the mind.

### What they found (results)

The Relationship between mental imagery and schema accessibility is essential to the reasoning process, while the imagery facilitates working memory.

## Commentary

### In short

The more content one has access to and can actively create interconnections between, the better they perform when tested for comprehension. Relatedness (R) allows us to access schema and leads to elaborative processing which leads to inferences as well as as a check on validity itself.

### In more detail

Researchers later examined the process of making relationships in the mind. Clement and Falmagne, 1986 studied the relationship between imagery, schema and comprehension of material. They conducted two experiments: the first examined respondent’s “performance on conditional reasoning problems” based on the relatedness of information and imagery presented to them in the experiment. Two rating tasks were developed—in the first— a sentence was read, and then rated on a scale of 1-5 relative to the ease with which participants could form a picture in their head that was related to the sentence. More specifically, “In a relatedness rating task, subjects rated conditional statements according to how easily or naturally they could conceive of a relation between the two actions described by the constituent clauses.” They were sure to mention that the Relations should be natural, and what came to mind first was what should be reported. After the rating (in which any stimuli that was rated zero was removed from the test) a conditional reasoning task was performed, each trial with imagery of varying value and relatedness. The second experiment was conducted in order to assess the imagery value of the conditional sentences used in Experiment 1. Both the imagery rating task and the task materials were from the first experiment. They explain that their results suggest that, “schema accessibility and mental imagery jointly were important in the reasoning process.” They stated that the Relationship between mental imagery and schema accessibility is essential to the reasoning process, while the imagery facilitates working memory. Essentially, the more content one has access to and can actively create interconnections between, the better they perform when tested for comprehension. Relatedness (R) allows us to access schema and leads to elaborative processing which leads to inferences as well as as a check on validity itself.

**Patterns it shows** R

**How to cite this** Clement and Falmagne (1986). Logical reasoning, world knowledge, and mental imagery: Interconnections in cognitive processes. Memory & Cognition.