Melting chocolate and melting snowmen: analogical reasoning and causal relations.
Children's performance in the classical a:b::c:d analogy task is traditionally very poor prior to the Piagetian stage of formal operations. The interpretation has been that the ability to reason about higher-order relations (the relations between the a:b and c:d parts of the analogy) is late-developing. However, an alternative possibility is that the relations used to date in the analogies are too difficult for younger children. Two experiments presented children aged 3, 4 and 6 years with a:b::c:d analogies which were based on relations of physical causality such as melting and cutting, for example chocolate bar:melted chocolate::snowman:melted snowman. Understanding of these particular causal relations is known to develop between the ages of 3 and 4 years. It was found that even 3-year-olds could solve the classical analogies if they understood the causal relations on which they were based.
Goswami
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Center for the Study of Reading, University of Illinois.
Brown
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D002099:Cacao; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D010945:Plants, Edible; D011340:Problem Solving; D011936:Reality Testing; D012914:Snow; D014887:Weather