The Mental Models Theory and Relational Reasoning: Refinements, Extensions, and a Developmental Perspective

Terms expressing relations are omnipresent in everyday communication, and relational reasoning plays a vital role in daily life. Cognitive psychology largely debated on the mechanisms underlying spatial reasoning, which led to a wide consensus on the mental model approach (Johnson-Laird, 2006). Although this research line has been for a time somewhat quiescent, advancements in other domains open the possibility of gaining crucial insights in the way in which we reason about space. First, given the recent interest in individual variability, one might ask how different working memory capacities affect the elaboration of mental models of space. Second, conceptual metaphor theory showed a central relation between the conceptualization of space and that of time, and this perspective invites the comparison between mental models of space and time. Moreover, this line of research can be extended towards other relational terms. Finally, many researchers emphasize the importance of a developmental perspective, in order to get a better understanding of the mental scaffolding underlying the cognitive processes. Therefore, in this project we will tackle the mental models theory of spatial reasoning by investigating the influence of working memory and how we can load the reasoning process, which strategies are used and how we can train the ability of reasoning about relations, both in children and adults.