{"pk":26980,"title":"Children’s spontaneous comparisons from 26 to 58 months predict performance inverbal and non-verbal analogy tests in 6th grade","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Comparison supports the development of children’s analogicalreasoning. The evidence for this claim comes from labora-tory studies. We describe spontaneous comparisons producedby 24 typically developing children from 26 to 58 months.Children tend to express similarity before expressing differ-ence. They compare objects from the same category beforeobjects from different categories, make global comparisons be-fore specific comparisons, and specify perceptual features ofsimilarity/difference before non-perceptual features. We theninvestigate how a theoretically interesting subset of children’scomparisons – those expressing a specific feature of similar-ity or difference – relates to analogical reasoning as measuredby verbal and non-verbal tests in 6th grade. The number ofspecific comparisons children produce before 58 months pre-dicts their scores on both tests, controlling for vocabulary at54 months. The results provide naturalistic support for experi-mental findings on comparison development, and demonstratea strong relationship between children’s early comparisons andtheir later analogical reasoning.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"comparison; similarity; language development;analogy"}],"section":"Talks: Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9p02c02b","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Catriona","middle_name":"","last_name":"Silvey","name_suffix":"","institution":"The University of Chicago","department":""},{"first_name":"Dedre","middle_name":"","last_name":"Gentner","name_suffix":"","institution":"Northwestern University","department":""},{"first_name":"Lindsey","middle_name":"","last_name":"Richland","name_suffix":"","institution":"The University of Chicago","department":""},{"first_name":"Susan","middle_name":"","last_name":"Goldin-Meadow","name_suffix":"","institution":"The University of Chicago","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2017-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/26980/galley/16616/download/"}]}