The development of analogy making in children: cognitive load and executive functions.
The aim of the current study was to investigate the performance of 6-, 8-, and 14-year-olds on an analogy-making task involving analogies in which there are competing perceptual and relational matches. We hypothesized that the selection of the common relational structure requires the inhibition of other salient features, in particular, perceptual matches. Using an A:B::C:D paradigm, we showed that children's performance in analogy-making tasks depends crucially on the nature of the distractors. Children chose more perceptual distractors having a common feature with C compared with A or B (Experiment 1). In addition, they were also influenced by unstructured random textures. When measuring reaction times instead of accurate responses, only the 8-year-olds' reaction times were significantly influenced by perceptual distractors. The 6-year-olds seemed to select the first match they noticed, and the 14-year-olds were not influenced (or much less influenced) by featural distractors. These results are compatible with an analogy-making account based on varying limitations in executive functioning at different ages.
Department of Psychology, University of Burgundy, 21065 Dijon Cedex, France. jean-pierre.thibaut@u-bourgogne.fr
Jean-Pierre
JP
Thibaut
Robert
R
French
Milena
M
Vezneva
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D003071:Cognition; D003210:Concept Formation; D056344:Executive Function; D005260:Female; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception