title: Preschoolers' use of surface similarity in object comparisons: taking context into account.
abstract: Previous research has emphasized the role of within-match similarity in children's comparisons. The current study investigated another potentially important contributing factor, namely the distinctiveness of the matching items relative to other items in the scene. Using a well-known relational mapping task, we found that 3- and 4-year-olds made more correct matches between identical objects when those objects were maximally distinctive from the foils. In a cross-mapping experiment, where same relative size was pitted against object similarity, 3-year-olds made more incorrect object matches when the objects were both similar to each other and distinctive from the foils. Furthermore, 3- and 4-year-olds performed the same, regardless of within-match similarity, so long as the ratios of within-match and nonmatch similarity were roughly equal. These findings suggest that children's comparisons are guided by a ratio consisting of many pairwise similarity relations, including (but not limited to) the degree of within-match similarity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA. jaepaik@sfsu.edu
authors.forename: Jae H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Paik
authors.forename: Kelly S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Mix
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011581:Psychological Tests; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012660:Semantics