Abstract

Relational Language Helps Children Reason Analogically Dedre Gentner ([email protected]) Department of Psychology, Northwestern University 2029 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 USA Nina Simms ([email protected]) Department of Psychology, Northwestern University 2029 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 USA Stephen Flusberg ([email protected]) Department of Psychology, Stanford University 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305 Abstract This paper explores the role of relational language in the development of children’s analogical reasoning ability. In two experiments, children were asked to make a relational mapping between two pictures while ignoring a competing object match. Three-and-a-half-year-olds, 5½-year-olds, and 7-year-olds were all more successful at this task when they heard relational language. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that children were as good at finding the relational match with an object match present if they heard relational language as they were when there was no compelling object match present at all. These results suggest that relational language may be important in instilling the ability to reason analogically. Keywords: Analogy; analogical development; relational language; language and thought Introduction Humans are prolific learners, in part because of our ability to learn through analogy. Analogy involves aligning the shared relational structure between a base and target representation (Gentner, 1983). From this mapping, reasoners can draw inferences about a target that are suggested by the base. Analogies also promote the abstraction of relational schemas that can then be applied to new situations or domains (Gick & Holyoak, 1983), and making an analogy often leads to re-representation of either or both aligned structures (Gentner & Colhoun, in press; Gentner & Rattermann, 1991; Loewenstein, Thompson, & Gentner, 1999). Given analogy’s potential to facilitate learning, investigation into children’s analogical abilities is crucial to understanding cognitive development. Analogical ability appears to be present even in very young children. For example, Gentner (1977) showed that preschoolers could carry out spatial analogies from the human body to a mountain or a tree, even when the matches were made difficult with surface distractors. Chen & Daehler (1989) found that 6-year-olds were able to transfer relational structure from a story to a real-world situation. Prior to completing a problem-solving task, children heard two stories. Some children heard neutral stories, and others heard stories illustrating abstract schemas for solving the task. Children who heard the abstract schemas were more likely to solve the task using the problem-solving technique from the stories than children who heard neutral stories. Although young children are able to make and use analogies, their abilities do not match those of adults. One of the most striking differences between adults’ and children’s performance on analogical tasks is children’s focus on objects and object properties over relations (Blades & Cooke, 1994; Gentner & Toupin, 1986; Gentner & Rattermann, 1991). The transition from reliance on objects to relations has been termed the relational shift (Gentner, 1988). Although this shift is well-documented, researchers disagree on what drives the change. The various explanations are closely tied to general theories of analogical development, specifically domain knowledge accounts and maturational constraints accounts. Domain knowledge theories of analogical development suggest that children’s ability to reason analogically increases as they accrue knowledge about a particular domain and its relations (Gentner, 1988; Gentner & Rattermann, 1991; Goswami & Brown, 1989; Rattermann & Gentner, 1998; Vosniadou, 1989). Thus, children may successfully reason analogically in a familiar domain (e.g., family relationships), but fail in an unfamiliar domain (e.g., scientific concepts). With limited knowledge of the relations, children depend instead on the information they do have about the objects and their properties. In contrast, maturational constraints theories view analogical development as driven primarily by increases in children’s basic cognitive capacity, like working memory (Halford, 1993) and inhibitory control (Richland, Morrison, & Holyoak, 2006). In these accounts, children are unable to represent complex relations due to working memory limitations, and they lack the inhibitory control to carry out relational matches when compelling object matches are present. Of course, it may be the case that maturational gains and knowledge gains interact in the development of analogical reasoning, but it is important to determine the relative contribution of each. Using a paradigm adapted from