Children’s Failure in Analogical Reasoning Tasks: A Problem of Focus of Attention and Information Integration?

Abstract

Children’s improved performance with age in analogy tasks has been explained by an increase in semantic knowledge of the items and the relations between them or by the development of an increased ability to inhibit irrelevant information. We tested the so-called “unbalanced attentional focus hypothesis” that claims that a failure to choose the “analogical” match can be the result of a difficulty to focus on all the relevant information available. Previous eye-tracking research has suggested, in analogies of the A:B::C:D format, that 5–6 year-olds organize their search around the C item. They focused significantly less than adults on the A:B pair, thereby hindering their discovering the relation(s) between A and B. We hypothesized that inducing them to focus their attention on the A:B pair at the beginning of the trial would affect their performance. In Experiment 1, increasing children’s focus on the A:B pair did, indeed, lead to better performance. In contrast, in Experiment 2, focusing their attention on the A:B pair impaired performance when the most salient relation holding between A and B was, in fact, irrelevant for the analogy. By contrast, the obvious-but-irrelevant relation in the A:B pair had no negative effect on performance when no explicit A:B focusing was induced. These results are discussed in terms of the temporal organization of the task and availability of information, and of children’s difficulties to disengage from the main goal of the task, when necessary.

Generating Relations Elicits a Relational Mindset in Children

“…It is possible that interventions like these elicit a general increase in children's prioritization of relations (e.g., Walker, Hubachek, & Vendetti, 2018), as Vendetti et al (2014) found with adults. However, none of the prior work with children has shown transfer to new relations on a separate task; thus, these improvements could also have been driven by increasing the quantity, quality, or accessibility of specific relational knowledge representations needed during the task (e.g., Glady, French, & Thibaut, 2017;Loewenstein & Gentner, 2005) or by decreasing the burden placed on cognitive resources while reasoning on the task (e.g., Richland & McDonough, 2010;Thibaut, French, & Vezneva, 2010b).…”

The role of superior image composition in children's analogical reasoning

“…Thus, it is vital to understand the mechanism underlying children's analogical reasoning and further support analogical reasoning development. Recently, a large body of literature attempted to intervene the development of analogical reasoning from the perspective of traditional developmental psychology . While the intervention methods in these studies are simple (eg, just changing materials presentation) and the effects cannot maintain (eg, without longitudinal studies to focus the long‐term intervention effect).…”

“…Recent research suggests that children's analogical reasoning accuracy decreases as the number of perceptual or semantical distractors in the task increases . Several eye tracking studies investigated the development of analogical reasoning with classically pictorial A:B::C:D analogical problems .…”

“…Recent research suggests that children's analogical reasoning accuracy decreases as the number of perceptual or semantical distractors in the task increases . Several eye tracking studies investigated the development of analogical reasoning with classically pictorial A:B::C:D analogical problems . For instance, they presented children and adults with the analogy problem, ie, clothes: wardrobe:: milk:?, and four options, ie, a cow (the cow was semantically similar to the milk), an alarm clock (the alarm clock was perceptually similar to the milk), and a racket (the unrelated object) and refrigerator (the correct target).…”

Commentary: Switching to the Rubber Hand

“…However, more systematic investigations of the onset of the illusion are rare. The present study by Yeh and colleagues examines the relationship between executive functions like attention shifts and the experience of the rubber hand illusion, i.e., they investigate the role of top-down processes in the perception of the illusion (Yeh et al, 2017 ). Importantly, the authors use not only questionnaire ratings, but also measure the illusion onset, thus asking the participants when “…they begin to experience the rubber hand as belonging to the self…” (p.4).…”