title: The neural bases of strategy and skill in sentence-picture verification.
abstract: This experiment used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to examine the relation between individual differences in cognitive skill and the amount of cortical activation engendered by two strategies (linguistic vs. visual-spatial) in a sentence-picture verification task. The verbal strategy produced more activation in language-related cortical regions (e.g., Broca's area), whereas the visual-spatial strategy produced more activation in regions that have been implicated in visual-spatial reasoning (e.g., parietal cortex). These relations were also modulated by individual differences in cognitive skill: Individuals with better verbal skills (as measured by the reading span test) had less activation in Broca's area when they used the verbal strategy. Similarly, individuals with better visual-spatial skills (as measured by the Vandenberg, 1971, mental rotation test) had less activation in the left parietal cortex when they used the visual-spatial strategy. These results indicate that language and visual-spatial processing are supported by partially separable networks of cortical regions and suggests one basis for strategy selection: the minimization of cognitive workload.
authors.affiliation: Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging, Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. reichle+@andrew.cmu.edu
authors.forename: E D
authors.initials: ED
authors.lastname: Reichle
authors.forename: P A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Carpenter
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Just
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology*; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology