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Raynal L, Clément E, Goyet L, Rämä P, Sander E. Neural correlates of unconventional verb extensions reveal preschoolers' analogical abilities. J Exp Child Psychol 2024; 246:105984. [PMID: 38879929 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2024.105984] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/25/2023] [Revised: 05/05/2024] [Accepted: 05/06/2024] [Indexed: 06/18/2024]
Abstract
In the current event-related potential (ERP) study, we assessed 4-year-olds' ability to extend verbs to new action events on the basis of abstract similarities. Participants were presented with images of actions (e.g., peeling an orange) while hearing sentences containing a conventional verb (e.g., peeling), a verb sharing an abstract relation (i.e., an analogical verb, e.g., undressing), a verb sharing an object type (i.e., an object-related verb, e.g., pressing) with the action, or a pseudoverb (e.g., kebraying). The amplitude of the N400 gradually increased as a function of verb type-from conventional verbs to analogical verbs to object-related verbs to pseudoverbs. These findings suggest that accessing the meaning of a verb is easier when it shares abstract relations with the expected verb. Our results illustrate that measuring brain signals in response to analogical word extensions provides a useful tool to investigate preschools' analogical abilities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lucas Raynal
- Université Paris Cité, Laboratoire INCC UMR 8002, CNRS, F-75006 Paris, France; Université CY Cergy Paris, Laboratoire Paragraphe, EA 349, 92230 Gennevilliers, France; Université de Genève, Faculté de Psychologie et Sciences de l'Education, Equipe IDEA, 1211 Genève, Switzerland.
| | - Evelyne Clément
- Université CY Cergy Paris, Laboratoire Paragraphe, EA 349, 92230 Gennevilliers, France
| | - Louise Goyet
- Université Paris VIII-Vincennes, Laboratoire DysCo, 93200 Saint-Denis, France
| | - Pia Rämä
- Université Paris Cité, Laboratoire INCC UMR 8002, CNRS, F-75006 Paris, France
| | - Emmanuel Sander
- Université de Genève, Faculté de Psychologie et Sciences de l'Education, Equipe IDEA, 1211 Genève, Switzerland
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2
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Goddu MK, Yiu E, Gopnik A. Causal relational problem solving in toddlers. Cognition 2024; 254:105959. [PMID: 39340872 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105959] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/24/2024] [Revised: 09/07/2024] [Accepted: 09/09/2024] [Indexed: 09/30/2024]
Abstract
We investigate young children's capacity for "causal relational reasoning": the ability to use relational reasoning to design novel interventions and bring about novel outcomes. In two experiments, we show that 24-30-month-old toddlers and three-year-old preschoolers use relational reasoning in a causal problem-solving task. Even toddlers rapidly inferred relational causal rules and applied this knowledge to solve novel problems--thus demonstrating both surprisingly early competence in relational reasoning and sophisticated causal inference. In both experiments, children observed a handful of trials in which a mechanistically opaque machine made objects larger or smaller. When prompted to solve a new problem, they used the machine to change the relative size of a novel object - even though its appearance and absolute size differed from previous observations, and even though subjects had never seen the machine generate objects of the required size before. This suggests that children quickly inferred abstract causal relations and then generalized these relations to determine which intervention would bring about the novel outcome required to solve the problem. These findings suggest a close link between early relational reasoning and active causal learning and inference.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mariel K Goddu
- Department of Psychology, University of California - Berkeley, Berkeley 94704, USA; Department of Philosophy, Stanford University, Palo Alto 94305, USA; Institut für Philosophie, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 14195, Germany; Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities: Human Abilities, Berlin 10969, Germany.
| | - Eunice Yiu
- Department of Psychology, University of California - Berkeley, Berkeley 94704, USA.
| | - Alison Gopnik
- Department of Psychology, University of California - Berkeley, Berkeley 94704, USA.
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Zhu R, Goddu MK, Zhu LZ, Gopnik A. Preschoolers' Comprehension of Functional Metaphors. Open Mind (Camb) 2024; 8:924-949. [PMID: 39077109 PMCID: PMC11285420 DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00152] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/06/2023] [Accepted: 06/05/2024] [Indexed: 07/31/2024] Open
Abstract
Previous work suggests that preschoolers often misunderstand metaphors. However, some recent studies demonstrate that preschoolers can represent abstract relations, suggesting that the cognitive foundations of metaphor comprehension may develop earlier than previously believed. The present experiments used novel paradigms to explore whether preschoolers (N = 200; 4-5 years; 100 males, 100 females; predominantly White) can understand metaphors based on abstract, functional similarities. In Experiment 1, preschoolers and adults (N = 64; 18-41 years; 25 males, 39 females; predominantly White) rated functional metaphors (e.g., "Roofs are hats"; "Tires are shoes") as "smarter" than nonsense statements (e.g., "Boats are skirts"; "Pennies are sunglasses") in a metalinguistic judgment task (d = .42 in preschoolers; d = 3.06 in adults). In Experiment 2, preschoolers preferred functional explanations (e.g., "Both keep you dry") over perceptual explanations (e.g., "Both have pointy tops") when interpreting functional metaphors (e.g., "Roofs are hats") (d = .99). In Experiment 3, preschoolers preferred functional metaphors (e.g., "Roofs are hats") over nonsense statements (e.g., "Roofs are scissors") when prompted to select the "better" utterance (d = 1.25). Moreover, over a quarter of preschoolers in Experiment 1 and half of preschoolers in Experiment 3 explicitly articulated functional similarities when justifying their responses, and the performance of these subsets of children drove the success of the entire sample in both experiments. These findings demonstrate that preschoolers can understand metaphors based on abstract, functional similarities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rebecca Zhu
- Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
| | - Mariel K Goddu
- Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities: Human Abilities, Berlin, Germany
- Institut für Philosophie, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Department of Philosophy, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
| | - Lily Zihui Zhu
- Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
| | - Alison Gopnik
- Department of Psychology, University of California - Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
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Felsche E, Völter CJ, Herrmann E, Seed AM, Buchsbaum D. How can I find what I want? Can children, chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys form abstract representations to guide their behavior in a sampling task? Cognition 2024; 245:105721. [PMID: 38262272 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105721] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/09/2023] [Revised: 12/23/2023] [Accepted: 01/10/2024] [Indexed: 01/25/2024]
Abstract
concepts are a powerful tool for making wide-ranging predictions in new situations based on little experience. Whereas looking-time studies suggest an early emergence of this ability in human infancy, other paradigms like the relational match to sample task often fail to detect abstract concepts until late preschool years. Similarly, non-human animals show difficulties and often succeed only after long training regimes. Given the considerable influence of slight task modifications, the conclusiveness of these findings for the development and phylogenetic distribution of abstract reasoning is debated. Here, we tested the abilities of 3 to 5-year-old children, chimpanzees, and capuchin monkeys in a unified and more ecologically valid task design based on the concept of "overhypotheses" (Goodman, 1955). Participants sampled high- and low-valued items from containers that either each offered items of uniform value or a mix of high- and low-valued items. In a test situation, participants should switch away earlier from a container offering low-valued items when they learned that, in general, items within a container are of the same type, but should stay longer if they formed the overhypothesis that containers bear a mix of types. We compared each species' performance to the predictions of a probabilistic hierarchical Bayesian model forming overhypotheses at a first and second level of abstraction, adapted to each species' reward preferences. Children and, to a more limited extent, chimpanzees demonstrated their sensitivity to abstract patterns in the evidence. In contrast, capuchin monkeys did not exhibit conclusive evidence for the ability of abstract knowledge formation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elisa Felsche
- School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK; Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany.
| | - Christoph J Völter
- School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK; Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany; Comparative Cognition, Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Medical University of Vienna and University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
| | | | - Amanda M Seed
- School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK.
| | - Daphna Buchsbaum
- The Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, USA.
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Lin X, Powell SR. Exploring academic and cognitive skills impacting retention and acquisition of word-problem knowledge gained during or after intervention. Child Dev 2023; 94:e362-e376. [PMID: 37415571 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13970] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/28/2022] [Revised: 04/22/2023] [Accepted: 05/18/2023] [Indexed: 07/08/2023]
Abstract
In the present study, we investigated the impact of a word-problem intervention in retention and acquisition of knowledge after the intervention ended. We based analyses upon Grade 4 students experiencing mathematics difficulty (average age at pretest = 8.77) who received one of two variants of a word-problem intervention (with [n = 111] vs. without [n = 110] embedded pre-algebraic reasoning instruction) and students within a business-as-usual condition (BaU [n = 127]) separately. Findings revealed that students who received the intervention not only tended to retain less, but they also showed more active knowledge acquisition after the intervention ended. Furthermore, word-problem intervention altered the contributions of some prior knowledge and skills on both retention and acquisition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xin Lin
- Faculty of Education, University of Macau, Avenida da Universidade, Taipa, Macau, China
| | - Sarah R Powell
- Department of Special Education, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA
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Abstract
Although adults use metaphors to guide their thinking and reasoning, less is known about whether metaphors might facilitate cognition earlier in development. Previous research shows that preschoolers understand metaphors, but less is known about whether preschoolers can learn from metaphors. The current preregistered experiment investigated whether adults (n = 64) and 3- and 4-year-olds (n = 128) can use metaphors to make new inferences. In a between-subjects design, participants heard information about novel artifacts, conveyed through either only positive metaphors (e.g., "Daxes are suns") or positive and negative metaphors (e.g., "Daxes are suns. Daxes are not clouds."). In both conditions, participants of all ages successfully formed metaphor-consistent inferences about abstract, functional features of the artifacts (e.g., that daxes light up rather than let out water). Moreover, participants frequently provided explanations appealing to the metaphors when justifying their responses. Consequently, metaphors may be a powerful learning mechanism from early childhood onward.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rebecca Zhu
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley
| | - Alison Gopnik
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley
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Felsche E, Stevens P, Völter CJ, Buchsbaum D, Seed AM. Evidence for abstract representations in children but not capuchin monkeys. Cogn Psychol 2023; 140:101530. [PMID: 36495840 DOI: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2022.101530] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/10/2021] [Revised: 10/02/2022] [Accepted: 11/23/2022] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
The use of abstract higher-level knowledge (also called overhypotheses) allows humans to learn quickly from sparse data and make predictions in new situations. Previous research has suggested that humans may be the only species capable of abstract knowledge formation, but this remains controversial. There is also mixed evidence for when this ability emerges over human development. Kemp et al. (2007) proposed a computational model of how overhypotheses could be learned from sparse examples. We provide the first direct test of this model: an ecologically valid paradigm for testing two species, capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.) and 4- to 5-year-old human children. We presented participants with sampled evidence from different containers which suggested that all containers held items of uniform type (type condition) or of uniform size (size condition). Subsequently, we presented two new test containers and an example item from each: a small, high-valued item and a large but low-valued item. Participants could then choose from which test container they would like to receive the next sample - the optimal choice was the container that yielded a large item in the size condition or a high-valued item in the type condition. We compared performance to a priori predictions made by models with and without the capacity to learn overhypotheses. Children's choices were consistent with the model predictions and thus suggest an ability for abstract knowledge formation in the preschool years, whereas monkeys performed at chance level.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elisa Felsche
- School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, Scotland; Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany.
| | | | - Christoph J Völter
- Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Medical University of Vienna and University of Vienna, Austria
| | - Daphna Buchsbaum
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, USA
| | - Amanda M Seed
- School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, Scotland
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Brockbank E, Lombrozo T, Gopnik A, Walker CM. Ask me why, don't tell me why: Asking children for explanations facilitates relational thinking. Dev Sci 2023; 26:e13274. [PMID: 35500137 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13274] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/03/2021] [Revised: 03/29/2022] [Accepted: 04/19/2022] [Indexed: 12/15/2022]
Abstract
Identifying abstract relations is essential for commonsense reasoning. Research suggests that even young children can infer relations such as "same" and "different," but often fail to apply these concepts. Might the process of explaining facilitate the recognition and application of relational concepts? Based on prior work suggesting that explanation can be a powerful tool to promote abstract reasoning, we predicted that children would be more likely to discover and use an abstract relational rule when they were prompted to explain observations instantiating that rule, compared to when they received demonstration alone. Five- and 6-year-olds were given a modified Relational Match to Sample (RMTS) task, with repeated demonstrations of relational (same) matches by an adult. Half of the children were prompted to explain these matches; the other half reported the match they observed. Children who were prompted to explain showed immediate, stable success, while those only asked to report the outcome of the pedagogical demonstration did not. Findings provide evidence that explanation facilitates early abstraction over and above demonstration alone.
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Affiliation(s)
- Erik Brockbank
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA
| | - Tania Lombrozo
- Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
| | - Alison Gopnik
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Caren M Walker
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA
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Wu Y, Chu SKW. Assessing children’s information and knowledge organisation competency in elementary schools of Hong Kong. J Inf Sci 2022. [DOI: 10.1177/01655515221118048] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
This article evaluates the information and knowledge organisation competency of third- to fifth-grade primary school students in Hong Kong directly or indirectly. The majority of the students are aged 8–11 years. The types of information and knowledge organisation schemes to be identified or organised include shallow taxonomies (e.g. a list of entities, a list of features of an entity, a list of events) and simple descriptive ontologies (e.g. a sequence of events, reasons of events, relation between entities or events). A total of 86 students participated in the study. Each student was asked to read an English book and a Chinese book, and to answer assessment questions about the content within the books. The questions ask children to identify members of a flat taxonomy and organise simple descriptive ontologies. The children’s overall information and knowledge organisation competency is found to be weak, but children’s information and knowledge organisation capabilities are not equally weak. The children identify features of an entity significantly better than a list of events, and identify reasons significantly better than flat taxonomies and relations. The findings have theoretical and practical implications for book writers, book cover designers, teachers, librarians and designers of information systems for children.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yejun Wu
- School of Library and Information Science, Louisiana State University, USA
| | - Samuel KW Chu
- Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
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Brown T, Hurly TA, Healy SD, Tello-Ramos MC. Size is relative: use of relational concepts by wild hummingbirds. Proc Biol Sci 2022; 289:20212508. [PMID: 35317668 PMCID: PMC8941385 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.2508] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Rufous hummingbirds (Selasphorus rufus) will readily learn the location and the colour of rewarded flowers within their territory. But if these birds could apply a relational concept such as ‘the larger flowers have more nectar’, they could forego learning the locations of hundreds of individual flowers. Here, we investigated whether wild male territorial rufous hummingbirds might use ‘larger than’ and ‘smaller than’ relational rules and apply them to flowers of different sizes. Subjects were trained to feed consistently from one of two flowers. Although the flowers differed only in size, the reward was always contained in the same-size flower. The birds were then tested on a choice of two empty flowers: one of the familiar size and the other a novel size. Hummingbirds applied relational rules by choosing the flower that was of the correct relational size rather than visiting the flower of the size rewarded during training. The choices made by the hummingbirds were not consistent with alternative mechanisms such as peak shift or associative learning. We suggest that while hummingbirds are very good at remembering the spatial locations of rewarding flowers, they would be able to use relative rules when foraging in new and changing environments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Theo Brown
- School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9TH, UK
| | - T Andrew Hurly
- Department of Biological Sciences, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
| | - Susan D Healy
- School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9TH, UK
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Mind the gap: How incomplete explanations influence children's interest and learning behaviors. Cogn Psychol 2021; 130:101421. [PMID: 34425315 DOI: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2021.101421] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/21/2021] [Revised: 07/23/2021] [Accepted: 07/28/2021] [Indexed: 12/17/2022]
Abstract
Children rely on others' explanations to learn scientific concepts, yet sometimes the explanations they receive are incomplete. Three studies explore how receiving incomplete or complete explanations influences children's subsequent interest and engagement in learning behaviors to obtain additional information about a topic. Children ages 7-10 (N = 275; 49% female, 51% male; 55% white) viewed question-and-answer exchanges about animal behaviors that included either a complete causal explanation of the behavior or an explanation that was missing a key step. Children rated how knowledgeable they felt after hearing the explanation (Study 1) or how much information was missing from the explanation (Studies 2 and 3) and reported how interested they were in learning more about the topic. They also completed two measures of learning behaviors: a book choice task (all studies) and a card choice task (Studies 1 and 2). In the book choice task, children opted to learn about the topics of the incomplete explanations more frequently than the topics of the complete explanations. However, there was no evidence of selective learning behaviors in the card choice task and children's self-reported interest in learning more about each animal behavior was not directly related to the type of explanation they had received. Individual differences in children's interest and learning behaviors were linked to verbal intelligence and domain-specific biological knowledge. Implications for the information-gap theory of learning and children's learning in multiple contexts are discussed.
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Danovitch JH, Mills CM, Duncan RG, Williams AJ, Girouard LN. Developmental changes in children’s recognition of the relevance of evidence to causal explanations. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2021. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2021.101017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
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