Comparison Facilitates Children's Learning of Names for Parts

Gentner, Dedre; Loewenstein, Jeffrey; Hung, Barbara

doi:10.1080/15248370701446434

Cited by 94 publications

(102 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Importantly, the comparison group was more accurate than the singleitem group both on the studied targets and on new targets not previously seen by either group. The finding that comparison with a standard can facilitate subsequent processing even of novel targets is consistent with research in analogy showing that structural alignment highlights common relational structure-including perceptual structure-thereby facilitating future processing of items in the domain (Gentner & Gunn, 2001;Gentner et al, 2007;Gick & Holyoak, 1983;Kotovsky & Gentner, 1996). These findings join other recent work in which structural alignment is used as a means to an end, such as the Kok et al (2013) study showing that medical students who compared radiograms of diseased versus healthy people were subsequently better able to diagnose focal lung diseases than a control group.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

“…For example, Gentner, Loewenstein, and Hung (2007) taught 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children to identify novel object parts; children were shown a novel standard figure, told that "this one has a blicket," and asked to say which of two other figures also had a "blicket." Mirroring our findings in Experiments 1 and 2, children performed much better when the alternatives were highly similar to the standard (and thus easily aligned with it) than when they were less similar (and less easily aligned) to the standard.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Going further, structure-mapping theory could be used to develop design principles for using comparison to accelerate learning in complex pattern-detection tasks. Borrowing techniques from developmental studies, training sequences could be designed to use progressive alignment, beginning with highly alignable pairs and progressing through less alignable pairs (Gentner et al, 2007(Gentner et al, , 2011Haryu et al, 2011;Kotovsky & Gentner, 1996;Thompson & Opfer, 2010). Other possibilities could also be investigated, such as permitting learners to store items (such as ideal exemplars or borderline cases) that they wish to use in future comparisons.…”

Section: Implications For the Development Of Perceptual Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

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Detecting anomalous features in complex stimuli: The role of structured comparison.

Kurtz

Gentner

2013

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

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The ability to detect anomalies in perceived stimuli is critical to a broad range of cognitive tasks, yet acquiring this ability often requires lengthy practice. In this research, we asked whether findings from research on analogical comparison can be used to aid in the acquisition of perceptual expertise. Building on findings that comparison can facilitate the detection of differences, the present research addressed two questions: (1) Does having an alignable comparison standard improve performance on a difficult detection task? (2) Can such comparison experience improve subsequent detection performance on single anomalous targets? Across 3 experiments, university undergraduates were asked to find an anomalous bone in drawings of animal skeletons. Target items including an anomaly were presented either alone or with a correct standard. Furthermore, to evaluate the impact of ease of alignment, the correct standard was presented either mirror-reversed (low alignable) or regular (high alignable). Results showed increased accuracy when a comparison standard was present and further gains when the standard was more easily alignable. In Experiment 3, we used a between-subjects design to reveal that advance comparison (as opposed to single-item training) led to improved detection of anomalies in subsequent novel examples presented as isolated targets. We conclude that the availability of a standard and ease of alignment promote encoding and processing. Furthermore, comparison-based learning confers an ongoing advantage even without standards for comparison. Therefore, task performance in application areas requiring detection of nonobvious anomalies can be improved by providing alignable standards next to targets or in advance training.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications For the Development Of Perceptual Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

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Detecting anomalous features in complex stimuli: The role of structured comparison.

Kurtz

Gentner

2013

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

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“…In particular, children often have difficulty learning from the comparison of two examples if they do not have prior experience within the domain, but providing children with relevant experience allows them to benefit from the comparisons (Gentner, Loewenstein & Hung, 2007;Kotovsky & Gentner, 1996). This does not mean that people need to be well versed in one example before comparing it to a different example (Gentner, 2005); modest amounts of prior knowledge or exposure seem to be sufficient.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

It pays to compare: An experimental study on computational estimation

Star

Rittle‐Johnson

2009

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

127

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Comparing and contrasting examples is a core cognitive process that supports learning in children and adults across a variety of topics. In this experimental study, we evaluated the benefits of supporting comparison in a classroom context for children learning about computational estimation. Fifth-and sixth-grade students (n = 157) learned about estimation either by comparing alternative solution strategies or by reflecting on the strategies one at a time.At posttest and retention test, students who compared were more flexible problem solvers on a variety of measures. Comparison also supported greater conceptual knowledge, but only for students who already knew some estimation strategies. These findings indicate that comparison is an effective learning and instructional practice in a domain with multiple acceptable answers.

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“…This in turn increases the likelihood that the child will subsequently be able to align the early examples with a further, less surface-similar instance of the same relational structure. Many studies have borne out these predictions (Gentner et al in press;Gentner et al 2007;Kotovsky and Gentner 1996;Loewenstein and Gentner 2001;Namy and Gentner 2002;Thompson and Opfer, in press;Waxman and Klibanoff 2000). We exemplify progressive alignment below.…”

Section: How Analogical Processing Fosters Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%