Work

Language and the career of similarity

Year: 1991

Type: book-chapter

Abstract: Evidence from children's performance in a variety of tasks suggests a change in the kinds of similarities children notice and use: Children tend to focus on literal similarity and then shift to the use of common objects, followed by common relations between objects, and finally relations between relations.Research from a variety of different domains and tasks that supports this career of similarity is discussed.It is proposed that the shift in similarity use is learning based, not maturational, since it occurs at different ages in different domains.Finally, it is conjectured that two processes act to change the representations within a domain so that relations come to be represented more uniformly within the domain.These are (a) carrying out other similarity comparisons in which the alignment of two representations promotes further commonalities and (b) learning and applying relational labels.

Source: Cambridge University Press eBooks

Parent work: Perspectives on Language and Thought: Interrelations in Development

DOI: 10.1017/cbo9780511983689.008

Authors: Dedre Gentner, Mary Jo Rattermann

Institutions: Northwestern University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois System

Language: English

Topic: Categorization, perception, and language

Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: green