Eye movements provide insight into individual differences in children's analogical reasoning strategies.

ABSTRACT: Analogical reasoning is considered a key driver of cognitive development and is a strong predictor of academic achievement. However, it is difficult for young children, who are prone to focusing on perceptual and semantic similarities among items rather than relational commonalities. For example, in a classic A:B::C:? propositional analogy task, children must inhibit attention towards items that are visually or semantically similar to C, and instead focus on finding a relational match to the A:B pair. Competing theories of reasoning development attribute improvements in children's performance to gains in either executive functioning or semantic knowledge. Here, we sought to identify key drivers of the development of analogical reasoning ability by using eye gaze patterns to infer problem-s

SUBMITTER: Starr A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5936652 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature