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Running head: CAUSAL FRAMING IMPROVES EARLY ANALOGICAL REASONING 1
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Goddu, Murty S. Lombrozo, Tania Gopnik, Alison |
| Copyright Year | 2019 |
| Abstract | Previous research suggests that preschoolers struggle with understanding abstract relations and with reasoning by analogy. Four experiments find, in contrast, that 3and 4-yearolds (N=168) are surprisingly adept at relational and analogical reasoning within a causal context. In earlier studies preschoolers routinely favored images that share thematic or perceptual commonalities with a target image (object matches) over choices that match the target along abstract relations (relational matches). The present studies embed such choice tasks within a cause-and-effect framework. Without causal framing, preschoolers strongly favor object matches, replicating the results of previous studies. But with causal framing, preschoolers succeed at analogical transfer (i.e., choose relational matches). These findings suggest that causal framing facilitates early analogical reasoning. Running head: CAUSAL FRAMING IMPROVES EARLY ANALOGICAL REASONING 2 “Glove goes with hand, so sock goes with _________” is a puzzle that we solve by attending to the relation between the first pair (i.e., gloves go on hands) and extending it to the second pair (i.e., socks go on feet). This kind of analogical reasoning plays an important role in cognition: recognizing the common relational structure between two exemplars can facilitate learning and deepen conceptual understanding (e.g., “an atom is like a solar system”; “electrical currents flow like water”) (Alexander, 2016; Gentner & Gentner, 1982; Jee, Uttal, Gentner, Manduca, Shipley, & Sageman, 2013; Jee et al., 2010; Vendetti et al., 2015). It can also generate novel insights, as exemplified by many classic examples in the history of science (e.g., “the force that draws the apple to Earth is the same as the force that keeps the moon in orbit”) (Gentner, 2002; Gentner, 1983; Gentner et al., 1997; Gruber & Barrett, 1974; Nersessian, 2002a; Nersessian, 1999). Given the usefulness of analogical reasoning, it would seem that this powerful cognitive ability might be present in young children, who construct complex knowledge systems from sparse data and undergo radical conceptual change over brief periods of time (Carey, 1985, 2009; Gopnik, 2012; Gopnik & Melzoff, 1997; Keil, 2011). Instead, many studies have found that preschoolers routinely fail to privilege abstract relational information over surface similarities without guidance from explicit social or linguistic cues. Below, we review prior work on young children’s analogical reasoning before motivating the hypothesis that we go on to test: that children can succeed in privileging abstract relational information over surface similarities in the context of a causal reasoning task. Most research on the development of analogical reasoning has used matching tasks with stimuli such as static shapes or images. One version of this Relational Match to Sample task tests participants’ preferences for relational matches versus object matches. Children see a target image that demonstrates a relation between two objects, and are asked to choose between two Running head: CAUSAL FRAMING IMPROVES EARLY ANALOGICAL REASONING 3 potential matches to that target. While relational matches share the same abstract structure—but no perceptual features—with the target, object matches share some of the target’s features, but not its relational structure (see Figure 1). If young children prioritize attention to superficial commonalities over relational commonalities, they will prefer object matches to relational matches in these tasks. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://cognition.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/cognition/files/goddu_et_al._child_development_2019.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
