Prelinguistic Relational Concepts: Investigating Analogical Processing in Infants

Abstract

This research asks whether analogical processing ability is present in human infants, using the simplest and most basic relation-the same-different relation. Experiment 1 (N = 26) tested whether 7-and 9-montholds spontaneously detect and generalize these relations from a single example, as previous research has suggested. The attempted replication failed. Experiment 2 asked whether infants could abstract the relation via analogical processing (Experiment 2, N = 64). Indeed, with four exemplars, 7-and 9-month-olds could abstract the same-different relation and generalize it to novel pairs. Furthermore, prior experience with the objects disrupted learning. Facilitation from multiple exemplars and disruption by individual object salience are signatures of analogical learning. These results indicate that analogical ability is present by 7 months.

The early emergence and puzzling decline of relational reasoning: Effects of knowledge and search on inferring abstract concepts

“…Along with previous research relying on habituation measures (e.g., Ferry et al, 2015), our current behavioral findings suggest that the developmental trajectory of relational reasoning may be better characterized as a ''U-shaped curve," in which early reasoning abilities are overshadowed by children's development of conflicting hypotheses (see e.g., Karmiloff-Smith & Inhelder, 1974-1975. In other words, the ''relational shift" may not reflect an initial inability or difficulty to formulate or use relational concepts.…”

“…On the other hand, these results contrast with a much larger body of research demonstrating that older, preschool-aged children consistently experience difficulty with relational matching (e.g., Gentner, 2010). If relational learning is indeed a continuous process, as has been proposed (e.g., Gentner & Medina, 1998;Gentner & Namy, 1999;Mix, 2008;Richland, Morrison, & Holyoak, 2006), and same-different concepts are already available very early in development (Ferry et al, 2015;Smith, 1984;Tyrrell et al, 1991;, why do older children often fail to demonstrate this knowledge? How might we interpret this apparent developmental reversal in which abstract reasoning seems to emerge in the first two years of life, but then decline in early childhood?…”

“…involve same-different relations in visual displays from very few trials (Dewar & Xu, 2010;Ferry, Hespos, & Gentner, 2015;Tyrrell, Stauffer, & Snowman, 1991;see also, Hochmann, Mody, & Carey, 2016).…”

“…Similarly, there is a large literature indicating the dissociation between children's knowledge as measured in looking-time tasks and their ability to act on this knowledge across a variety of developmental domains (e.g., Hood, Cole-Davies, & Dias, 2003;Kirkham, Cruess, & Diamond, 2003;Zelazo, Frye, & Rapus, 1996). These possibilities may account for differences between younger (Ferry et al, 2015; and older (Christie & Gentner, 2014) children's performance on same-different relational reasoning tasks.…”

Discriminating relational and perceptual judgments: Evidence from human toddlers

“…Human infants are able to generalize these relations in looking-time experiments. In particular, pre-verbal infants can be habituated to pairs of same and different objects (Addyman & Mareschal, 2010;Ferry, Hespos, & Gentner, 2015;Hochmann, Mody, & Carey, 2016;Tyrell, Stauffer, & Snowman, 1991), discriminate and generalize patterns of repeated visual or auditory elements (ABA/AAB/ABB) (Dawson & Gerken, 2009;Johnson et al, 2009;Marcus, Vijayan, Bandi Rao, & Vishton, 1999;Saffran, Pollak, Seibel, & Shkolnik, 2007), and provide a conditioned response to pairs of identical stimuli (Hochmann, 2010;Kovács, 2014). Moreover, very young toddlers can apparently use same-different relations in an active causal learning paradigm (Walker & Gopnik, 2014), although this ability declines in the preschool period (Walker, Bridgers, & Gopnik, 2016).…”