TY - GEN
T1 - The paradox of relational development
T2 - 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Recognizing and Representing Events, CogSci 2016
AU - Hoyos, Christian
AU - Shao, Ruxue
AU - Gentner, Dedre
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Emma Bulzoni, Katie Cha, Tiana Hickey, and Victoria Wee for their help with data collection. This work was supported by NSF SLC Grant SBE-0541957 awarded to the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC), and by ONR Grant N00014-92-J-1098 to Dedre Gentner.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2016. All rights reserved.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Recent studies report a striking decline in children's ability to notice same-different relations around age 3 (Walker et al., 2015). We propose that such a decline results from an object focus related to children's avid noun-learning. To test this, we examine children's performance on a classic relational task - the relational match-to-sample task (RMTS). Prior work has shown that 4-year-olds can pass this task (Christie & Gentner, 2014). However, if nominal language induces an object focus, their performance should be disrupted by a noun-labeling pretask. In two experiments, 4-year-olds either labeled objects or actions in a naming pretask. Then they completed the RMTS task. Consistent with the noun-focus explanation, the object-naming group failed the RMTS task, whereas the action-naming group and a control group both succeeded. This suggests that nominal language can lead to an object focus, and that this could explain the temporary decline in children's relational processing.
AB - Recent studies report a striking decline in children's ability to notice same-different relations around age 3 (Walker et al., 2015). We propose that such a decline results from an object focus related to children's avid noun-learning. To test this, we examine children's performance on a classic relational task - the relational match-to-sample task (RMTS). Prior work has shown that 4-year-olds can pass this task (Christie & Gentner, 2014). However, if nominal language induces an object focus, their performance should be disrupted by a noun-labeling pretask. In two experiments, 4-year-olds either labeled objects or actions in a naming pretask. Then they completed the RMTS task. Consistent with the noun-focus explanation, the object-naming group failed the RMTS task, whereas the action-naming group and a control group both succeeded. This suggests that nominal language can lead to an object focus, and that this could explain the temporary decline in children's relational processing.
KW - cognitive development
KW - language
KW - learning
KW - relational processing
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M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85068544320
T3 - Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2016
SP - 2507
EP - 2512
BT - Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2016
A2 - Papafragou, Anna
A2 - Grodner, Daniel
A2 - Mirman, Daniel
A2 - Trueswell, John C.
PB - The Cognitive Science Society
Y2 - 10 August 2016 through 13 August 2016
ER -