Children's Failure in Analogical Reasoning Tasks: A Problem of Focus of Attention and Information Integration?

ABSTRACT: Children's improved performance with age in analogy tasks has been explained by an increase in semantic knowledge of the items and the relations between them or by the development of an increased ability to inhibit irrelevant information. We tested the so-called "unbalanced attentional focus hypothesis" that claims that a failure to choose the "analogical" match can be the result of a difficulty to focus on all the relevant information available. Previous eye-tracking research has suggested, in analogies of the A:B::C:D format, that 5-6 year-olds organize their search around the C item. They focused significantly less than adults on the A:B pair, thereby hindering their discovering the relation(s) between A and B. We hypothesized that inducing them to focus their attention on the A:B pair

SUBMITTER: Glady Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5440766 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature