Journal article
D. Gentner
1977
1977
Semantic Scholar
DOI
Cite
Cite
APA
Click to copy
Gentner, D. (1977). Children's Performance on a Spatial Analogies Task.
Chicago/Turabian
Click to copy
Gentner, D. “Children's Performance on a Spatial Analogies Task.” (1977).
MLA
Click to copy
Gentner, D. Children's Performance on a Spatial Analogies Task. 1977.
BibTeX Click to copy
@article{d1977a,
title = {Children's Performance on a Spatial Analogies Task.},
year = {1977},
author = {Gentner, D.}
}
Abstract
GENTNER, DEDRE . Children's Performance on a Spatial Analogies Task . CHILD DEVELOPMENT , 1977, 48, 1034-1039 . Young children performed as well as or better than adults on tasks requiring use of spatial analogies . The tasks involved body-parts analogies, such as, "If this [pictured] mountain had a knee, where would it be?" The entities referred to were physical objects familiar to young children, and this question format clearly called for analogical responding . Thus, sources of confusion were minimized. In a pilot study, it was shown that preschool children could' apply such body-parts analogies to pictures as consistently as adults . The mappings were then made more difficult by varying the orientation of the pictured objects or by adding misleading pictorial details to the pictured objects . Adults performed somewhat less consistently than preschoolers and first graders when misleading details were present ; there were no age differences when orientation was varied . These results suggest that analogical ability is present at a very early age .
