TY - JOUR
T1 - Similarity and the development of rules
AU - Gentner, Dedre
AU - Medina, José
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by NSF grant SBR-95–11757 and ONR contract N00014–92-J-1098 to the first author and by a Northwestern Cognitive Science Fellowship to the second author. We thank Ken Forbus, Jeff Loewenstein, Art Markman, Meredith Williams, Mary Jo Rattermann and Phil Wolff for insightful discussions of these issues, and Jacques Mehler, Steve Sloman and two anonymous reviewers for invaluable comments on a previous version.
Copyright:
Copyright 2018 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 1998/1
Y1 - 1998/1
N2 - Similarity-based and rule-based accounts of cognition are often portrayed as opposing accounts. In this paper we suggest that in learning and development, the process of comparison can act as a bridge between similarity-based and rule-based processing. We suggest that comparison involves a process of structural alignment and mapping between two representations. This kind of structure-sensitive comparison process - which may be triggered either by experiential or symbolic juxtapositions - has a twofold significance for cognitive development. First, as a learning mechanism, comparison facilitates the grasp of structural commonalities and the abstraction of rules; and, second, as a mechanism for the application and extension of previously acquired knowledge, comparison processes facilitate the application of abstract knowledge to new instances.
AB - Similarity-based and rule-based accounts of cognition are often portrayed as opposing accounts. In this paper we suggest that in learning and development, the process of comparison can act as a bridge between similarity-based and rule-based processing. We suggest that comparison involves a process of structural alignment and mapping between two representations. This kind of structure-sensitive comparison process - which may be triggered either by experiential or symbolic juxtapositions - has a twofold significance for cognitive development. First, as a learning mechanism, comparison facilitates the grasp of structural commonalities and the abstraction of rules; and, second, as a mechanism for the application and extension of previously acquired knowledge, comparison processes facilitate the application of abstract knowledge to new instances.
KW - Analogical learning
KW - Rule-based processing
KW - Similarity-based processing
KW - Structure-sensitive comparison
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U2 - 10.1016/S0010-0277(98)00002-X
DO - 10.1016/S0010-0277(98)00002-X
M3 - Article
C2 - 9557385
AN - SCOPUS:0031616946
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 65
SP - 263
EP - 297
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
IS - 2-3
ER -