• Bingbing Li, Meng Zhang, Junlong Luo, Jiang Qiu, and Yijun Liu.
• Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (SWU), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, China; School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
• Neuroscience. 2014 Jun 13;270:177-82.

AbstractHigh-density, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded to explore differences in spatiotemporal dynamics between modus ponens (MP) and modus tollens (MT) in the Wason selection task. Results showed that MP elicits a more positive P3b-like component than MT from 400 to 800 ms. MP appeared to occur earlier than MT in various stages of proposition testing, such as stimulus processing and response selection. ERP results showed that MT has a longer duration and more negative later negative component (LNC) than MP at 2,000 ms. This result suggests that MT occupies more cognitive resources than MP in the final stages of proposition testing. The short and small left frontal LNC obtained by MP implies examination of the expectable conclusion, whereas the long and large left frontal LNC elicited by MT may be involved in the retention operation of the card in working memory from the monitoring and inspecting putative conclusion in the later stages of proposition testing.Copyright © 2014 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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