Differences in numeric, verbal, and spatial reasoning between engineering and literature students through a neurocognitive lens

Abstract

This study used electroencephalography to investigate the brain activations of college students of various disciplines when they responded to questions in numeric, verbal, and spatial reasoning tasks. In total, 15 engineering students and 15 literature students were recruited in this experiment and were asked to respond to 12 intelligence test questions. The results were as follows: (i) the participants’ brain activations increased in the frontoparietal network during the numeric reasoning task, and the spectral power in the right anterior temporal cortex was generally higher in the literature students than in the engineering students. (ii) Activations of the language network were observed during the verbal reasoning task, and the spectral power in the right-biased posterior frontal cortex was generally higher in the literature students than in the engineering students; by contrast, the spectral power in the left lateral frontal cortex was generally higher in the engineering students than in the literature students. (iii) The participants’ brain activations increased in the spatial processing network during the spatial reasoning task, and the spectral power in the right posterior temporal cortex was generally higher in the literature students than in the engineering students.