Transformations and Transfer: Preschool Children Understand Abstract Relations and Reason Analogically in a Causal Task

Abstract

Previous research suggests that preschoolers struggle with understanding abstract relations and with reasoning by analogy. Four experiments find, in contrast, that 3-and 4-year-olds (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 causeand-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. We gratefully acknowledge the Bezos Family Foundation for funding this research. We thank Rosie Aboody,

Learning what to change: Young children use “difference-making” to identify causally relevant variables.

“…Previous research in the development of analogical reasoning finds that preschoolers routinely fail to privilege abstract relations over superficial similarities between stimuli used in training and target stimuli at test, unless an experimenter provides explicit scaffolding (e.g., applies novel labels to relations or encourages children to compare exemplars; Christie & Gentner, 2010, 2014). Children’s performance in the present tasks thus corroborates recent research suggesting that causal framing facilitates children’s transfer for abstract relations—for example, the abstract relations that hold between the beginning and ending states of causally transformed objects (Goddu et al, 2017a, 2017b). Furthermore, the results of the present experiments provide an interesting counterpoint to findings from another recent (noncausal) task, in which children who completed “near” (vs. “far”) analogical transfer tasks were less likely to reason relationally in a subsequent paradigm (Walker, Hubachek, & Vendetti, 2018).…”

“…In addition, the results of a power analysis to detect an effect size of moderate practical significance ( d = 0.6) at a power of 0.8 suggested that a sample of 45 participants would be sufficient. Age was treated categorically in Experiment 1 (as well as in Experiments 2 and 3) in light of recent work suggesting that children’s performance on causally framed relational transfer tasks may undergo shifts during the preschool years (Goddu et al, 2017a, 2017b; Walker et al, 2016). The extent to which the present tasks might be characterized as relational reasoning tasks is explored in the General Discussion.…”

“…Three- and 4-year-olds who observe a sequence of two causal events are able to learn the abstract relation between the beginning and ending states of causally transformed objects to make predictions about the effect that will result from the transformation of a novel object. For example, if preschoolers see an agent transform a small apple into a large apple, and then see the same agent transform a small dog into a large dog, they predict that the agent is more likely to similarly “grow” an unfamiliar novel object (e.g., a die) into a larger form of that object than they are to “stretch” a familiar object (e.g., another apple) in a way that does not reflect the abstract form of the effect they have previously observed (Goddu, Lombrozo, & Gopnik, 2017a, 2017b). In addition, there is one study that suggests that children may be able to make inferences about the abstract forms of both causes and effects, simultaneously.…”

Size is relative: use of relational concepts by wild hummingbirds

“…Being able to form and use abstract relationships between objects has been considered a cornerstone of human cognition [ 2 ], an ability that develops through infancy as human children acquire language [ 3 , 4 ]. Although in children and adults, the ability to use relational concepts is thought to be the basis of abstract thinking, a growing number of other species, vertebrates and invertebrates, appear to use relational concepts.…”

Models, Structures and Analogical Thinking in Early Childhood Education and Care and Primary School: A Qualitative Study on Teachers’ Perception about Those Concepts

“…A similar description can be found in the symbolic representation described by Bruner (Ozdem-Yilmaz & Bilican, 2020). Analogical thinking has been described as important in education for people with and without disabilities (Harrison & Treagust, 2006;Vakil et al, 2011) as well as for developing higher-order thinking (Richland & Begolli, 2016), also in ECEC children (Goddu et al, 2020;Thibaut & Goldwater, 2017) and primary school children (Heywood & Parker, 2009).…”