{"pk":27106,"title":"The paradox of relational development is not universal:Abstract reasoning develops differently across cultures","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Recent studies demonstrate a puzzling decline in relationalreasoning during development. Specifically, 3-year-olds failin a relational match-to-sample (RMTS) task, while youngerchildren (18-30 months) succeed (Walker, Bridgers, &Gopnik, 2016). Hoyos, Shao, and Gentner (2016) propose thatolder children fail because of a bias toward individual objectproperties induced by “avid noun learning.” If this is the case,children learning a language with a stronger emphasis onverbs, like Mandarin Chinese, may show an attenuateddecline in relational reasoning. We first test this possibility byreproducing the causal RMTS task in China, and find thatMandarin-speaking 3-year-olds outperform their English-speaking peers in the U.S. In a second experiment, we showthat Mandarin speakers exhibit a corresponding bias towardrelational solutions while English speakers prefer object-based solutions in an ambiguous context. We discuss possiblemechanisms through which language and culture maypromote (or hinder) the early development of relationalreasoning.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Cognitive Development"},{"word":"Causal Learning"},{"word":"relationalreasoning"},{"word":"overhypotheses"},{"word":"Language"},{"word":"culture."}],"section":"Posters: Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0m82j4vz","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Alexandra","middle_name":"","last_name":"Carstensen","name_suffix":"","institution":"Radboud University","department":""},{"first_name":"Caren","middle_name":"M.","last_name":"Walker","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, San Diego","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/27106/galley/16742/download/"}]}